Anthology of Ideas » world

Myths about the developing world.

aaron — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:38:38 +0000

Hans Rosling gave a very educational TED talk that uses UN statistics about world health, money and birth rates to destroy the myths about the so-called third world. In the first few minutes, he demonstrates that the developing world has more of the traits that one assigns to the “western” world than previously believed. He then continues to attack other myths through the use of statistics, humor and some really neat graphs.

Are you shutting down for Earth Hour?

aaron — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:58:30 +0000

Earth hour, which takes place on March 29^th at 8:00 P.M. your local time, is an event sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund to raise awareness of the dire ((Hyperbole much? Yes and no. My view of climate change is: if we want to kill ourselves slowly, let’s go ahead and do it.)) threat of climate change.

What do you have to do? Nothing much, just turn your lights off for an hour when 8pm rolls around. I’m planning on hitting my circuit-breaker for a total blackout, but you don’t have to go that far. Want to participate? Head over to the Earth Hour website for more information.

Now this is one of those “make a lot of publicity but not have much of a real effect” events, so not even the organizers would argue that this would save the world, so don’t worry about that part of it. However, these little things do add up, and if you can turn off your lights one night a year and still survive, why shouldn’t you be able to do it a little more often? Why allow one step to remain one step?

A quick note on the event:

Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagshipsAtlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco and Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

I haven’t decided yet, but I think that I may even shut down the website for the hour. Maybe, I don’t know. (Oh and a big hat tip to ecogeek )

Creating a World- An Introduction and The Goals

aaron — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 23:15:21 +0000

I have always wanted to write a book. Not just any book; a good one. One that creates an entire universe and populates it; maybe not even a single book, maybe a whole series. Anyway, that’s not why this whole section is here. Instead this section will create a universe. As a basic foundation it will be similar to any Fantasy book or movie you have read. There will be Elves, Dwarfs, Goblins and Dragons. Instead of creating a world defined by the genre and within a tired cliche, I will try to breath new life into the old themes; in such a way that the universe I create is unique while still be familiar and accessible.
A little background: The world I’m going to imagine here has been knocking around my head for a long time. Actually a lot of it is stuff that came from the Arathria Chronicles game elsewhere on the site. The main reason I stopped making the game is because I knew it could not possibly measure up to the world I was creating. However through the upcoming articles I hope to be able to fully flesh out the world from the basics such as the composition of the world to the more intricate subjects such as the flow of energy and the foundations of intelligence. Hopefully I can do what I envision justice.
Also filtered through the descriptive and technical articles I hope to develop my fiction writing skills and write some short stories to elaborate on the ideas I write about.