Athletic, educational, scientific and technological races

There are two paths to success in this world. One is to create things of value. The other is to take things of value away from other people. There is more honor in the former.

This is Steve Landsburg in one of two blog posts devoted to explaining the problem of racing.

Take the school-test-scoring race. William K. Lim complains in Science that too much effort goes into test training in some Asian countries. For example, last year in South Korea parents spent $16 billion, and kids spent much of their time, inside and outside school, in test training.

Lim is worried that struggling to "memorize facts for regurgitation" detracts from "nurturing the creativity and thinking skills required in successful scientists." As a result, "Asian science will continue lagging behind the West." "A radical transformation of the educational culture must happen before homegrown Asian science can challenge Western technological dominance."

Notice the irony. Lim rejects the test-scoring racing culture but embraces the scientific/technological racing culture. But both cultures are silly and they are silly for the same reason. Landsburg explains it:

When your kid is an Olympic gold medalist, mustn’t you feel a little sheepish about all the superhuman effort that went into nothing more than taking a gold medal away from someone else?

Rare earths and a shortage of (bad) news

A news article in Science by Robert F. Service is titled "Nations Move to Head Off Shortages of Rare Earths" and subtitled "Looming scarcities of a handful of essential elements could shake the electronics industry, unless manufacturers and mining companies develop more sources soon."

Service actually reports that rare earths are so abundant and cheap that mining companies do not bother to exploit most ores and some refining businesses have even closed in recent years for lack of demand. So better headings for the article would be:

Rare earths not so rare

Manufacturers and mining companies keep finding new sources of essential elements for the electronics industry

But, alas, such information does not deserve the name of news. Or even worse, it may look like good news.

Adults should be allowed to take risks

The title of this post comes from a Nature editorial from 2007. A Nature editorial this week ends with this words:

'Let the buyer beware' may be a commercial maxim, but science can certainly reduce the risks.

However, the editorial is more about politics than science. Nature asks for government regulation of dietary supplements.

In the absence of adequate regulation, false claims by supplement makers abound. At best, these claims can cheat consumers of their money. At worst, as in the case of ephedra, widely touted for weight-loss, they could cost users their lives.

I would let the buyer beware and the seller build his reputation and pay for his mistakes. Both should be allowed to take risks.

And speaking of false claims - at best, false claims by governments cheat consumers and tax-payers of their money; at worst, as in countless cases, they cost lives. A difference between politicians (including voters) and sellers is that politicians usually pay much smaller prices for their mistakes than sellers do.

Ecosystem stewardship: a new lexicon for bureaucrats

The article Ecosystem stewardship: sustainability strategies for a rapidly changing planet by F. Stuart Chapin III and coauthors proposes a new lexicon for writers of bureaucratic literature. For example, in old parlance a resource manager is a "decision-maker who sets course for sustainable management" while in the new ecosystem-stewardship parlance it is a "facilitator who engages stakeholder groups to respond to, and shape, social–ecological change and nurture resilience."

The new lexicon will appeal to bureaucrats of all stripes, from Bhutanese officials fostering Gross National Happiness to British Conservatives overhauling energy policy.

The article is in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, which purports to publish "polished, concise and readable reviews in all areas of ecology and evolutionary science".

Resilience, xenophobia, and the transition to misery

The Resilience Science blog quotes with not the slightest hint of disapproval The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience, by Rob Hopkins:

In the Transition approach, we see cutting carbon as one of many ‘Resilience Indicators’ that are able to show the increasing degree of resilience in the settlement in question. Others might include:

- the percentage of local trade carried out in local currency

- percentage of food consumed locally that was produced within a given radius

- ratio of car parking space to productive land use

- degree of engagement in practical Transition work by local community

- amount of traffic on local roads

- number of business owned by local people

- proportion of the community employed locally

- percentage of essential goods manufactured within a given radius

- percentage of local building materials used in new housing developments

- percentage of energy consumed in the town that has been generated by local ESCO

- amount of 16 year olds able to grow 10 different varieties of vegetable to a given degree of basic competency

- percentage of medicines prescribed locally that have been produced within a given radius

Gross National Happiness (Not)

A few students in the capital, who lived within walking distance from school, but would rather have their parents chauffeur them to school in a car, have now begun walking.

Some have started picking up rubbish they find along the way and throwing them in a bin and stopped carrying plastic bags to schools.

Many others are insisting their friends and family members join them in a daily five-minute meditation and mindfulness session every morning and evening.

These were some of the initiatives, 16 class 12 students from various schools in Thimphu informed the prime minister about when they were asked what they understood and observed from the GNH (Gross National Happiness) workshops and the initiatives they took in their respective schools.

Doing things one would rather not do and spending five minutes twice a day in "mindfulness" sessions? If happiness is properly measured, Bhutan may well be in recession.

Does resilience thinking have any impact at all on the ground?

Victor Galaz asks this question in Resilience Science and attempts to answer it with "two very interesting examples." Resilience thinking inspired "a climate vulnerability and resilience assessment" of an area in Colombia, and "a reframing* of Colombian biodiversity policy" that is "now being used for systematic country-side consultations."

So the answer is yes. Resilience thinking is having an impact on the rhetoric used "on the ground." Mission accomplished.

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* "Results of the suggested modification include, amongst other things: i) a new conceptual framework for biodiversity management, based upon the resilience thinking paradigm applied to socio-ecological systems; ii) a model that accounts for the various stability domains in which natural and social systems appear in the territory; and iii) a revision of the state – pressure – response model, in order to include new drivers of change and to devise a hierarchical cross scale interactions affecting biodiversity." (Sic)

A sane criticism of GDP abuse

Here.