Solvation

China takes on Green GDP

For reference on a similar, more inclusive effort in the U.S. look at redefiningprogress.org

The following excerpt is from Asia Times

BEIJING  -  The  State  Statistical  Bureau  (SSB)  and  the  State  Environmental  Protection  Administration  (SEPA)  are  jointly  working  on  criteria  for  a  "green  gross  domestic  product  (GDP)",  which  deducts  the  cost  of  environmental  damage  and  resources  consumption  from  the  traditional  GDP. 

According  to  an  international  seminar  on  "green  GDP"  calculation  held  here  Friday  by  the  SSB  and  SEPA,  related  departments  will  soon  establish  theoretical  systems  and  basic  frameworks  to  evaluate  the  overall  environment  and  economy,  set  up  indexes  to  calculate  pollutant  materials  and  environmental  costs  and  spread  the  new  index  systems  from  experimental  sites  to  other  areas.

The SEC Wants Your Company to Be 'Cultured'

Here we go!

"Even more striking is the revelation that while formal ethics and compliance programs have some impact, it is the organizational culture that has greater influence in determining program outcomes."

Trust flows where it knows

Well, Stephen Covey ("7 Habits" guy) has a new book coming out.  Evidently "nothing is as profitable as the speed of trust."

So, it's not the Attention Economy after all, but the Trust Economy.  Why do I say this?

(1) People are bartering, unless they happen to have money -- and sometimes even then.  Craigslist, freecycle, titletrader, bookcrossing, and community-cooperative lenders are all examples of barter that have sprung up in trusting environments.  In the non-profit world, these are represented by  Giving circles.

(2) When there is so much transparency, why do some seek transparency asymmetry, where they disclose little and others disclose a lot?  Because they distrust: fearful executives claim privilege to lay bare everyone else because they just don't trust 'em.  In response, the privacy-poor don't trust the executives, since they don't similarly show their cards.  Soon, you'll know precisely whom to distrust: they'll be the people who are running around clothed at the nudist camp -- the people who are visibly motivated by fear.

(3) While trust is abundant, it is valuable, and something giving you their trust is a precious thing, regardless of the context... unlike attention, which can be unwelcome to the point of seeking a restraining order.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire

Here's The Experiment in Education, for better or worse: I wonder who is taking the data?  

Smart Mobs: Power User kids are revolutionizing education

Judy Breck posts on Smart Mobs about an article in eSchool News regarding technology in schools.  It got me thinking....

"Thaink yeeu... four coaling."

Of course the use of three separate English accents in one sentence is the dead giveaway on a voice call, but how do you tell when your email customer service is outsourced?

Ted Rall

I don't really mean to be a newsfeed for Ted Rall, but there are worse things.  From: THE BLAND LEADING THE BLIND (emphasis mine)

The nanny media, even more prudish since 9/11, covers our millions of eyes to protect us from our own icky deeds. In Afghanistan in 2001, while covering a war that had officially killed 12 civilians, I watched a colleague from a major television network collate footage of a B-52 bombing indiscriminately obliterating a civilian neighborhood. "If people saw what bombing looks like here on the ground," he observed as body parts and burning houses and screaming children filled the screen, "they would demand an end to it. Which is why this will never air on American television." But other countries don't have our nanny media. Europeans and Arabs see the horror wreaked in our name on their airwaves, assume that we see the same imagery and hate us for not giving a damn. America's self-censors make anti-Americanism worse.