Solving the World's Energy Problems - With LEGO

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire, September 7, 2007 (ENS) - More than 100,000 middle-school students in 38 countries are poised to create solutions for the energy needs of a growing world population - with robots and LEGO, the snap-together plastic building blocks.

An organization called For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, FIRST, Thursday launched its 10th anniversary FIRST LEGO® League season with the unveiling of the 2007 Power Puzzle Challenge.

The Challenge calls for teams of middle-school students, ages 9 to 14, to use robotics to understand and create solutions for one of the world's most critical environmental issues - energy management and conservation.

To create a theme and Challenge missions that parallel real issues, FIRST collaborated with the Gulf Coast Combined Heat and Power Application Center, the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of South Carolina, and the Second Hill Group, an independent consultant on energy, environment and green design.

To accomplish missions involving solar panels on houses, hydro-dams, wind turbines and tree planting, teams will program their robots to find sustainable options to meet the world’s growing energy needs in environmentally sound ways.

"The environment is a huge concern for everyone, including kids," said Dean Kamen, who founded FIRST. "Giving them a hands-on experience that allows them to use their imaginations and creativity in combination with science and technology to solve a real-world problem is empowering. It captures the true spirit of FIRST LEGO League and unleashes the creative problem solving skills today’s kids need for building a better tomorrow."

FIRST also kicked off the 2007 Junior FIRST LEGO League Power Puzzle season Thursday for six to nine year-olds.

After eight weeks of preliminary matches, the competition season culminates at high-energy, sports-like tournaments.

Teams will compete to participate at the FIRST LEGO League World Festival, to be held in conjunction with the FIRST Championship, April 17-19, 2008 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia.

"FIRST LEGO League so brilliantly captures the natural curiosity and creativity of youth, and combines it with real-world issues and research and teamwork activities that put children in a position of identifying and creating innovative solutions to big problems," said Jens Maibom, vice president, LEGO Group.

Founded in 1932, the LEGO Group is a privately held, family owned company, based in Billund, Denmark. The name LEGO is an abbreviation of the two Danish words "leg godt," meaning "play well."

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.

NEPAL: 'Privatisation' Violates Right to Health - Activists by Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Feb 9 (IPS) - Hiring a private firm to manage the drinking water system in Nepal's capital violates the right to health guarantee in the country's interim constitution, activists are set to argue before the Supreme Court.

Four groups are opposing a plan to break up the Nepal Water Supply Corporation (NWSC) in the Kathmandu Valley and disperse its work and assets among three new agencies, one of which will hire the British firm Severn Trent to manage water delivery in the Valley's five municipalities for six years.

The scheme, which has been approved by Nepal's new legislature, is a condition tied to building the huge Melamchi project that will divert river water to the capital. It is led by the Asian Development Bank (AsDB).

The Machine is Us/ing Us Transcription
Feb 10th, 2007 by Prof Wesch



De Digital Ethnography, Kansas State University. A working group of Kansas State University students and faculty dedicated to exploring and extending the possibilities of digital ethnography

Virgin Offers $25 Million Prize to Defeat Global Warming

LONDON, UK, February 9, 2007 (ENS) - Former Vice President Al Gore and Virgin Group Chairman Sir Richard Branson today announced the Virgin Earth Challenge, a $25 million global science and technology prize to encourage a technology that will remove at least one billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent from the atmosphere per year.

The Virgin Earth Challenge will award $25 million to the individual or group who demonstrate a commercially viable design which will result in the net removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases each year for at least 10 years without countervailing harmful effects.

This removal must have long term effects and contribute materially to the stability of the Earth's climate.

Sir Richard will adjudicate the prize with a panel of five judges - all world authorities in their respective fields - Gore; British diplomat and environmentalist Sir Crispin Tickell; Tim Flannery, author of "The Weather Makers;" Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Dr. James Lovelock, an independent scientist, most famous for his Gaia theory that the planet functions as a superorganism.

The panel of judges will be assisted in their deliberations by The Climate Group and Special Advisor to The Virgin Earth Prize Judges, Steve Howard.

The timing of the announcement of the Virgin Earth Challenge follows the announcement last week by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that temperatures on Earth could increase by as much as 6.4 degrees C by the end of this century. If this were to occur, said Sir Richard, it would result in "most of life on our planet being exterminated."

Gore said, "Carbon dioxide levels already are far above anything measured in the prior 650,000 year record, and just last week in Paris scientists gave us their strongest warning yet of the consequences of inaction. So the dangers are clear. But the opportunities, if we take action now, are innumerable, and Sir Richard's initiative to stimulate exploration of this new approach to the climate crisis is important and welcome."

Dr. Hansen said, "I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most. This is why I am supporting the Virgin Earth Challenge as a judge - we must explore all means, both known and unknown, to help alleviate this crisis."

Sir Richard said, "We would also like to call on governments and members of the international community to join us in The Virgin Earth Challenge by matching or adding to the prize pot available to encourage the greatest number of entrants of those who could come up with a solution which could save our planet."

"If the greatest minds in the world today compete, as I'm sure they will, for The Virgin Earth Challenge," Sir Richard said, "I believe that a solution to the C02 problem could hopefully be found - a solution that could save our planet - not only for our children but for all the children yet to come."

The creation of the Virgin Earth Prize is one of a number of initiatives including investment in renewable energy research, development and production as part of Virgin Group's Gaia Capitalism project, and $3 billion Clinton Initiative pledge of September 2006.

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Europa e o pder do consumidor.
Eat To Live: 1 Million against GM Food

Published on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 by United Press International
by Julia Watson

It would be a treat to be able to take a leaf out of the supermarket tabloids and start this column with a headline that sounds like one of theirs but is pinched from the BBC: "Astronaut in 'love kidnap plot.'"

It's so unlike the usual sober announcements from Auntie, as the Beeb is fondly known in Britain. And if it weren't describing a current and rather sad story, you could file it alongside other gems like the recently-seen-in-the-checkout line, "Woman Delivers Own Baby While Skydiving" and "Alien Mummy Goes on Rampage."

Sadly, the news banner would be even odder coming under the Eat To Live category. So you'll have to make do with the more relevant declaration that is almost equally startling: "One million EU citizens call for labeling of GM foods."

That is a lot of worried individuals. What's interesting about it is that these 1 million citizens in 21 countries across Europe have not put their signatures to petitions for the end of the war in Iraq. Nor for effective action to deal with global warming. Or HIV/AIDS in Africa, Darfur or child labor. Or other life-affecting horrors. They've put pen to paper over biotech food.

Consumers in the United States appear not to give a hoot about genetic modification. They've been merrily chomping their way through processed foods containing genetically modified tomatoes, or derivatives of GM soy and corn for years now. Organic or natural farmers striving to keep their land free from GM contamination are dismissed as woolly liberals, their protests barely covered in the mainstream media.

Americans may wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, under EU law, the kind of processed foods like ketchup, cooking oil and cake mix must be labeled if the ingredients include 0.9 percent -- an almost imperceptible amount -- of genetically modified organisms or more. So consumers can take their pick when buying.

The problem is a loophole. Food products derived from animals that have been raised on GM feed don't need to be labeled.

This Greenpeace-organized petition, just delivered to the Commission in Brussels and reported under that specific headline by EUobserver, an independent newsletter covering European Union and Commission affairs, calls for meat, eggs and milk from animals that have been fed with genetically modified crops to be labeled accordingly.

Europeans are concerned enough about GM foods that many of the major supermarket chains have banned biotech ingredients from their own-brand foods for some years now.

Tesco, Britain's largest group; Carrefour, France's biggest supermarket chain; Delhaize, the second-largest supermarket group in Belgium, and Italy's Parmalat all have removed any trace of GM ingredients in their own products. All because their customers made it clear with their buying practices that they weren't convinced by the scientific reports of the health safety of GM foods. Nor were they impressed by the efforts of test field scientists to contain the spread of GM seeds and pollen to adjoining farms, some of them organic.

In this current revolt, the general public has more faith, according to Greenpeace, in studies that have shown that animals react badly to genetically modified crops. Up to 30 percent of farm animals' regular diet, the group says, contains genetically modified organisms. It also contends that more than 90 percent of GM crops imported into the European Union are soy and corn destined for animal feed.

The industrial food industry inside and outside the European Union declares these fears are politically motivated and not based on sound science, that they are unfairly restricting their access to the very valuable European market.

In August 2003 the United States lodged a case against the EU ban with the World Trade Organization. The WTO last year called the EU's refusal between 1998 and 2004 to approve any genetically modified organisms illegal. It argued that the moratorium was not justified scientifically and in effect amounted to a trade barrier.

But here's a little gem that may interest voters inside the United States. Whether he'd like to or not, EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou must take action to investigate the accusations behind the continent-wide petition.

According to the European Constitution, if any petition collects 1 million signatures, the commission can be asked to investigate the issue.

"A petition supported by 1 million signatures of course shows a strong interest on the part of European citizens for a specific issue and therefore we will take this into serious consideration," Kyprianou said at a news conference with Greenpeace.

The European Constitution has not, however, been sanctioned. Nonetheless, as Marco Contiero of Greenpeace said at the conference, "Even if the EU constitution is not ratified it is still a principle for the EU -- it has a political weight that cannot simply be disregarded."

Who Stole the Soul?: The Decline of Food in America

Published on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
by Bob St. Peter

Up until recently I've defined "soul food" narrowly as the traditional Southern fare born out of slavery and forced frugality. But the more food I grow for myself and my family, the more food I buy from local farmers and fishers, and the more recipes I create with the food of my bioregion, the more I understand soul food as food that nourishes the body, mind, and spirit, preserves the landscape, and embraces the connection between culture and diet. In contrast, the more time I spend outside of my food utopia at Forest Farm the more I wonder, what the hell has happened to food in America? Who stole the soul from our food?

I'm often reminded by my neighbor and organic farmer Eliot Coleman that the best cuisines in the world have all come from peasant cultures. It's not a difficult conclusion to come to if one recognizes that all throughout history the responsibility of growing, preparing, and cooking food has fallen on the poor, the peasants, and the working class. Using what was available, which usually meant what was grown locally and seasonally, our ancestors transformed what they had into wonderful and nourishing foods. Dinner wasn't the only thing coming out of those kitchens; rituals, traditions, and cultures were created, too.

While here in America we are still burdened by an underclass of farmers and food workers, the modern day serfs, slaves, and peasants, it is hard to compare the food that has come to dominate the American landscape to the food of Italy, Thailand, Mexico, or just about any other nation on earth that still has food traditions intact. For the first time in the history of our civilization, people who are connected to the land and sea for their livelihood are no longer the creators of food culture and tradition. Whereas diet was once determined by what the land and sea produced, food in America today is determined by what can be produced cheapest, in the highest quantity, and that can be packed so full of artificial ingredients that it can be shipped thousands of miles and stored for weeks, months, or even years. Worldwide, cultures built upon fresh, nourishing food are being replaced by an extractive industrial food system that is based on the narrow values of progress, efficiency, and profit.

Here in Maine this is clear as day. One-hundred-and-fifty-years ago Maine was the breadbasket of northern New England, providing a diverse range of plant and animal foods for its citizens and sending surplus to the markets of Portsmouth and Boston. Maine was even self-sufficient in sugar, producing maple and beet sugars. But like so many agricultural nations and states around the world, concentrated agribusiness and fast food culture has relegated Maine to an exporter of commodities and luxury goods and an importer of basic essentials.

But the tide it turning. Organizations and groups like Food for Maine's Future and Slow Food are reclaiming a culture of food built upon economic fairness, ecological sanity, and good taste. At the grassroots, farmers, fishers, activists, and consumers are coming together to create food independence and food /interdependence./ Because in the end, we are all stakeholders in our food system, good or bad. We are all eaters.

And in the halls of the Maine state house, the Protect Maine Farmer's campaign is working hard to represent concerned Maine citizens who believe it is the role of our state government to recognize and protect Maine's agricultural heritage and legacy, and to ensure that Maine's food producers will have the tools they need to succeed in the decades to come.

The soul food train is leaving the station and we've got an eclectic band of people from all walks of life who value what they eat, care about where it came for, and respect the people, the land, and the sea that produced it. There's plenty of room and the food is great. /All aboard!

Bob St.Peter is the executive director of The Good Life Center at Forest Farm in Harborside, Maine, the last home of pioneering homesteaders Helen and Scott Nearing.

Faking Corporate Support for Women

Published on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 by Minutemanmedia
by Martha Burk

Two phone calls this week, one from a liberal magazine, and one from an organization representing female executives, were asking questions about two sides of the same issue: “Best” lists for working women. You know the ones “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers,” “Fifty Best Places for Latinas to Work,” “Best Companies for Diversity,” and so on. The magazine wanted to know if the lists are of any use to working women at all, or if in fact they do harm. The female executives wanted to alert me that Wal-Mart, though facing the largest sex discrimination lawsuit in history, made their top 30. Their question was whether a company can be good for exec women and lousy for say, cashiers.

It is not only possible, but it may be usual, for a company to be better for women at the top than those at the bottom. That’s also true for men. You see plenty of grayhairs in gray suits, riding around in chauffeured limos driven by other guys who make little more than the minimum wage, often with meager benefits to boot. The difference is there are still a lot more men than women in those backseats reading the Wall Street Journal and figuring out how to bust the unions.

The bigger question is whether the companies that show up on these lists are worthy of admiration at all. An example I like to use is a school. Suppose your kid’s school was named one of the “Top 100 in the U.S.” by two different scholastic magazines. You’d be pretty proud, wouldn’t you? Now suppose you learn that the first magazine allowed the schools to rate themselves by sending in descriptions of programs, and they didn’t have to provide data on student performance. The second magazine did its own rating, but digging a little deeper you find the actual report cards of the students in the ranked schools are abysmal. The top school comes in with average student grades of 28%, and the lowest rates a miserable 11% average. Furthermore, the school pays a Vice Principal a full time salary just to fill out forms, buy advertising, and underwrite the magazines’ award ceremony so the school can make the list in the first place. Still impressed? More likely you’d be outraged.

This scenario happens every day in corporate America. Diversity Manager is the usual title of our theoretical Vice Principal, and she or he has a big budget to throw around so the company makes the list. The company buys advertising in the magazine giving the award (or makes an outright donation if it’s an organization with no magazine), and gets to brag about it. Most are Fortune 500 firms where women are stuck at the bottom, and many are defending themselves in court for sex discrimination (or have paid huge settlements) -- some in the same years they get the awards.

This stuff is far from benign. I took a look at some publicly available court papers in a sex discrimination filed against the giant consulting company, Deloitte and Touche, and talked to some women in the company. One told me the company recruiter had touted their “awards” and “Best” listings repeatedly. Once on board, she realized women never seemed to get promoted, and were systematically winnowed out as time passed. It gets worse. When another woman sued for sex discrimination, Deloitte tried to get the judge to throw the case out – strictly on the grounds that it had made the “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers,” published by Working Mother Magazine. The female judge said no dice – but who knows what a good-ol’-boy on the bench would have done.

The lesson is simple. Women should be extremely wary of what they read about “good” companies if the information is put out by any organization that stands to profit. And yes, lists can do harm. Just ask the woman who left a good job to go to what she thought was a better one at one of these firms, only to have to sue for pregnancy discrimination two years later. It did happen, it does happen, and “Best” lists only make the problem worse.

Martha Burk is the author of Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It, just out from Scribner. Director, Corporate Accountability Project, National Council of Women’s Organizations. www.womensorganizations.org.

A New Fast Track For Unfair Trade

Por Christine Ahn
Fevereiro 08, 2007 no Blog do Norte Americano Tom Paine.

Christine Ahn is a policy analyst with the Korea Policy Institute and Oakland Institute and a member of the Korean Americans for Fair Trade coalition.

Trade representatives from the United States and South Korea are racing against the clock to sign the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement under the “fast track” deadline. With $72 billion dollars traded annually between the two countries, the KorUS FTA would become the second largest trade deal after the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). While such a trade deal would normally sail through the halls of the U.S. Congress and the Korean National Assembly, times have changed since the first free-trade regimes rolled into Washington, D.C., and Seoul.

Critics of unfettered trade have had over a decade of evidence revealing how NAFTA has devastated the lives of working people across the continent. In the 2006 midterm elections, 37 members of Congress were elected on a fair-trade platform, ousting pro-free trade incumbents. Newly elected Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia even took the opportunity on primetime national television to challenge the Washington consensus on trade. In response to President Bush’s State of the Union address, Webb said that America's workers should ''expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization, their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly in the international marketplace.''

Congress granted President Bush fast track, also known as Trade Promotion Authority, to speed the negotiation of trade agreements; in return, legislators are given 90 days to review the proposed deal before they vote up or down. As this authority will expire on July 1, U.S. and Korean trade representativess will meet in Washington for three days beginning February 11 in a frenzied attempt to smooth over colossal differences in order to come up with an agreement by April 2. Wall Street corporations and South Korean chaebols (trading conglomerates) are salivating at this trade deal that would lower their tariffs and increase their profits.

Para a matéria toda clique no título.

Mais uma na Ode:

A revolutionary new light bulb uses so little energy it can last decades

If Anton Philips, the man who co-founded the global electronics firm bearing his name in 1891, could see his great-grandsons today, he would surely be proud. His direct descendents, Frans Otten and Warner Philips, recently introduced a revolutionary new light bulb that uses 90 percent less electricity than the standard bulb and lasts 50 times longer. According to Anton Philips’ descendents, their bulb will burn an impressive 50,000 hours, or 35 years if used four hours a day.

Leia tudo aqui.

Why God leaves us alone

Deepak Chopra
This article appeared in Ode issue: 40

And why, according to Deepak Chopra, that’s a very good thing

I’m sure that in their heart of hearts, most people wish God would stop interfering in everyday life. This is a concern that reaches far beyond religion. The U.S. president and other born-again Christians refer to God’s helping hand in making war in the Middle East. Our Western society couldn’t be more different from traditional Muslim society, but we have one thing in common: People in both places believe God is on their side. This means they know what God thinks—a remarkable assumption given that God is infinitely present and infinitely transcendent; cosmic and personal at the same time; invisible and unable to be located in time and space.

People continue to be nagged by ancient documents called scriptures that claim to transmit what it is that God exactly wants. The great Indian poet Kabir wrote that he had read all the scriptures, bathed in all the sacred pools, visited all the holy shrines, and found God in none of them. Most people would consider that a sign of despair when in fact it’s the key to freedom. In Vedanta, the purest spiritual doctrine of Hindu India, God doesn’t want anything of us. He doesn’t want to be found; he has no laws that we should obey; he never judges, punishes or puts forth expectations.

The truth is that God left us alone a long time ago. This wasn’t an act of abuse or abandonment. It was an opportunity for us to find our own freedom, and in that freedom to realize something simple yet profound: God is existence itself. Existence isn’t an empty vessel. It contains life and death. It harbours the Self, a form of consciousness that can embrace its own existence and create its own stage for evolution. If we go deep enough into Being, leaving aside all the objects that surround us and mask Being from our eyes, we find that Being is eternal and contains the seed of every created thing. All that exists is only a reflection of the Self, and all worlds, including this precious one, fall into three categories:

1. Consciousness reflected in material objects and events
2. Consciousness reflected in more abstract objects and events
3. Consciousness reflecting upon itself

Leia a matéria inteira aqui.

A lesson from sports champions: The power of intention changes reality. Your health. Your career. Your world.

Seven weeks before Muhammad Ali met World Heavyweight Champion George Foreman for their “rumble in the jungle” at Kinshasa in 1975, Ali practised his punches as if he couldn’t care less, taking a few desultory swipes at his sparring partner as if distractedly popping a bag. Mostly he’d lie against the ropes and allow his opponent to pound away at him from every angle.

In the latter years of his boxing career, Ali spent much of his training time learning how to take punches. He studied how to shift his head by just a hair a microsecond before the connection was made, or where in his body he could mentally deflect the punch so that it would no longer hurt. He was not training his body to win. He was training his mind not to lose, at the point when deep fatigue sets in around the 12th round and most boxers cave in. Ali’s most important work was being done, not in the ring, but in his armchair. He was fighting the fight in his head.

The boss who breaks all the rules

Dominique Haijtema
This article appeared in Ode Magazine issue: 40

Ricardo Semler’s employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Meet the Brazilian businessman who does everything differently

His favourite questions start with “why.” Why should employees feel compelled to read their emails on Sunday evening, but can’t go to the movies on Monday afternoon? Why should they take work home, but can’t bring their kids to the office? Why should they have to sit for hours in traffic getting to the head office? Brazilian businessman Ricardo Semler loves to question everything. His guiding principle? If you want creative employees, don’t smother them with ridiculous rules.

For 25 years, Semler has been putting into practise what increasing numbers of modern management gurus are now preaching. He heads a democratic company, Semco, where employees set their hours, determine their salaries and choose their bosses. Managers don’t have secretaries, reserved parking spaces or even desks. There is minimal bureaucracy. No IT or human-resources departments. No mission statement, no five-year plan. Meetings are voluntary and every employee has a say in everything. Once, when Semler organized a meeting to discuss developing a speedier dishwasher for the consumer market, no one showed up. And the idea was shelved.

Semco was a traditionally managed engineering company when the young Ricardo Semler took over from his father. He was just 22 and had brought philosophical conflicts with his father to a climax: The son demanded that Semco steer away from its activities as a shipbuilding supplier and abandon autocratic management in favour of decentralization. He threatened to leave the company, so his father gave him a free hand. On his first day as director, Ricardo Semler fired 60 percent of senior management and began laying the foundation for a democratic organization.

Semco has long since abandoned its engineering activities. The company now develops software, is building a hotel and ecological resort and is involved with hospital and airport projects. Semler himself can’t even list all his company’s activities; he leaves that to his employees. Semco now has 3,000 staffers (with very little turnover) and is growing 20 to 30 percent a year, with annual sales of $212 million U.S. [190 million euros] in 2003.

Semco’s radical policies do have a downside. Demand from outsiders wanting to visit its offices is so heavy that employees have complained of feeling like exotic attractions at a zoo. But that seems a small price to pay for such runaway success. Semler has written two international bestsellers about his unusual management method and has taught at renowned business schools, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in the U.S. And he spends two months a year doing whatever he feels like doing.

Last March, while vacationing with his family in Switzerland, he agreed to meet me in a hotel bar before hitting the slopes, to discuss his groundbreaking management ideas. For a corporate executive, he seemed unusually cheerful and relaxed. Semler told me he had all the time in the world—confessing that he hadn’t worn a watch in years, and that suited him just fine.


Why are so few companies in the world run like Semco?
Ricardo Semler: “Because managers are afraid to lose power and control.”


What can managers do differently?
“In order to do things differently, you have to relearn how to think and have the courage to let go. Managers can learn to have more faith in their employees. That’s difficult in an environment where nearly everything is based on mistrust and control. But it’s not human nature to question who you should send which email to and whose permission you should ask. Absurd! If people behave like animals in a cage, I don’t think it’s because of the people but the cage. This faulty conditioning starts at school. That’s the foundation of conformity and submission to silly rules. Small start-ups often begin in an atmosphere of excitement in someone’s garage, but as soon as they grow, all the pleasure disappears with organization. Anyone with a little talent who can think won’t work for that kind of company, right?”

Doesn’t a major corporation with thousands of employees require a different style of management than a company with 10 staff members?
“Why? We were a small company and now we have 3,000 employees. Nothing has changed in the way we work.

“I often hear that my management style only works in small unlisted companies and probably only in Brazil. That’s a typical argument to rationalize not changing yourself. And it’s not easy. A democratic organization isn’t something you decide on and arrange from one day to the next. We’ve been doing this for a quarter century and are still learning every day. It’s a lengthy process because people’s conditioning is very strong.”

How can an organization become more democratic?
“By questioning all kinds of things. For example, we examined how much time our employees spend sitting in traffic. We figured out that they spend a million hours a year getting to and from work. We wanted to cut that down, which means you have to take drastic measures. We decided to close down our head office and start working in small units. In the 21st century, it makes no sense to get people to come to your head office from all over the country—because even if they physically all get together, they’ll still send an email to a colleague sitting two metres away.

“Added to this, if you wake up in a bad mood on Monday morning, you don’t have to come to work. We don’t even want you to come because you simply don’t feel like it and will therefore not make a contribution. We want employees who are ready and willing to work. If that means they only come twice a week, that’s okay. It’s about results.”

It’s striking that your books never mention the word “leader.”
“Leadership is way overrated. In fact I don’t call the courses I teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology “leadership courses.” I think the idea is outdated that leadership is only relegated to a few and that it can be planned, structured and developed.”

What’s wrong with cultivating leaders?
“The whole idea of leaders implies that only a few are capable of pointing us in the right direction. I’m more interested in the structures or the architecture of organizations that enable the company to survive in the future, independent of the leaders.

“An important facet of leadership is succession. Succession of managers is often arranged in a dramatic and hectic way. Take Louis Gerstner, who was taken on as an outsider at IBM, where there are thousands of people with management or business-economics degrees. Was there truly no one in the company capable of taking the lead? That’s pretty weak.”

But an outsider could have a more objective view of the company?
“Maybe. But in saying that you’re actually implying that a company can’t innovate or change without hiring outsiders. That’s a scary thought. I would consider it disappointing if an organization can’t produce any leadership talent capable of looking at the company objectively. Take [former General Electric CEO] Jack Welch. When someone puts such a strong mark on a company, as Welch did, it’s often difficult for his successor. Many strong leaders have left weak organizations in their wake. There’s a good reason why many companies—including General Electric—need major reorganizations right after those strong leaders leave.”

Have you arranged your own succession?
“Oh, I’ve been working on it for some 15 years. Sixty percent of the business is now comprised of initiatives I have absolutely nothing to do with. The company is doing very well without me. That was also the case when I had a car accident last year and spent a couple of months in intensive care. And a couple of weeks each year I’m travelling and not reachable. Everything runs smoothly.”

How do you develop managers at Semco? Do you send them to business schools?
“We never send anyone anywhere. Everyone is responsible for their own career and training. All the employees have a budget to do with as they see fit. We don’t say a word about the choice of courses. We’ve never had a shortage of people interested in taking on management duties, coordinating or guiding others. In our system, managers are anonymously evaluated every six months by their subordinates. If they don’t measure up, they’re no longer allowed to fulfill a leadership role. It’s as simple as that. At our company, you’re a manager as long as your staff approves.”

Do you see it as your mission to inspire entrepreneurs and managers?
“Not at all. I don’t see my methods as a gift to humanity. I don’t do it to teach others; I do it for myself. I simply wanted to create an organization where I wanted to work myself. It’s actually quite egotistical.”

Taken with kind permission from the Dutch book De essentie van leiderschap (“The essence of leadership”) by Dominique Haijtema (Business-Contact, ISBN 9047001826), a collection of interviews with Madeleine Albright, Deepak Chopra, Jack Welch and Muhammad Yunus, among others. Most of the interviews were previously published in the Dutch business magazine Management Team. Haijtema is a journalist with the Dutch business daily Het Financieele Dagblad

Entrepreneur of the year
Ricardo Semler, born in 1959 in São Paulo, became the director of Semco—his father’s company—in 1982. He helped take it from an ailing industrial enterprise with annual sales of $4 million U.S. [2.3 million euros] to a dynamic, fast-growing company active in numerous sectors, from air coolers to consultancy, with annual sales of $212 million U.S. [190 million euros] in 2003. Moreover, Semco is enjoys a reputation worldwide as the example of a “democratic organization” (www.semco.com.br).

In 1990 and 1992, Semler was named Brazilian businessman of the year. His first book, published in 1993, was Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace; ten years later, he published The Seven Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works. In 2003, he founded Lumiar, a democratic school in São Paulo, where children between the ages of 2 and 10 are encouraged to learn whatever they consider interesting (www.lumiar.org.br).

Ricardo Semler’s tips for democratic management
• Do away with bureaucracy, which creates a sense of false security.
• Let employees determine everything themselves: their salaries, their working hours, their managers.
• Let go of control to stimulate creativity.
• Strip away special treatment for managers—no parking space or secretary, not even their own desk.
• Continually question whether what appears to be self-evident is actually good for the company.
• Regularly take a break from work when you are unreachable for a period of time.
• Read classic literature instead of management books.
• Remember that leadership has nothing to do with hierarchy, because everyone can develop leadership skills.

When (Organizational) Change Hurts: Startups Need to "Think Employees" from the Get-Go

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — Start-up firms should pay as much attention to creating a pattern for managing their employees as they do to developing the vision for their product. A decade-long study of Silicon Valley (California) technology startups finds that companies were three times more likely to fail if at some point they altered the founder's blueprint for employee relations than if they maintained their original employee model.

After tracking the success of more than 150 start-up firms founded since 1994, Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Michael Hannan and collaborators found that not only did altering the system for managing employees hamper success, but also such firms had long-term stock valuations that were nearly six times lower.

During the firm's first decade, changing blueprints for employment relations proved even more disruptive to a company's success and growth in market capitalization than replacing a founding CEO with an outsider. The advent of a new leader by itself did not significantly increase a firm's failure rate even if it did temporarily depress the rate of growth of stock prices. What counted was whether or not the original blueprint for the employment model was preserved in the transition.

Research coauthored by Hannan builds on previous work identifying which of several major employee relations models seem to work best for a high-tech start-up company at various stages. According to Hannan:

Bureaucratic and autocratic models, in which employees are managed by formal controls and procedures or close oversight, lead to the greatest failure rates and lowest growth rates in market capitalizations.
The "star" model, which recruits, rewards, and supports employees on the basis of their talent; and the "commitment" model, in which employees work essentially as a close knit family, support start-up success.
"The tension comes in," says Hannan, "when the company gets larger. As you're trying to scale up, bureaucratic and autocratic models work better. But making the transition to that from a star or commitment blueprint proves to be dangerous."

Anecdotal evidence from interviews with Silicon Valley founders and CEOs revealed that sometimes entrepreneurial ventures switched from a looser employee framework to one involving greater controls under pressure from investors, particularly during a financial crunch period. "Changes in how employees are managed are frequently made as a cost-cutting measure," Hannan said.

His study, coauthored with former GSB professor James Baron and Greta Hsu and Özgecan Koçak, both graduates of the School's doctoral program, is the culminating piece of research to spring from the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies (SPEC). Founded by Barron and Hannan in 1994, SPEC represents a unique effort to understand the issues involved in managing emerging companies, particularly in their early years. This latest study, which appeared in the October 2006 issue of Industrial and Corporate Change, is the last of about 10 papers published by Hannan and his colleagues in major journals to draw on SPEC-related interviews, surveys, and archival research into Silicon Valley startups.

"While most research has looked at entrepreneurship from the financial angle, through our SPEC-related work we've shown that organizational theory is also highly relevant to this field," says Hannan, the Business School's StrataCom Professor of Management. Additionally, SPEC provided the School with the impetus to take advantage of research opportunities in one of the most vital entrepreneurial belts in the country.

Echoing the advice he's been offering since he first began publishing his SPEC findings in 1994, Hannan notes that company founders should think much more carefully about their employee blueprints from the start. "Business plans usually have 20 pages on the product, and a paragraph about employee relations, and that needs to shift," he says. "You don't want to find you've backed your way into something without realizing it. Once systems get coded, they're hard and risky to change."

—Marguerite Rigoglioso

Think Globally, Act Globally

Published on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 by The Nation
by Liza Featherstone

Some ideas are just so good that once you hear them explained, you wonder, Why hasn't anyone done this already? Avaaz is just such an idea, a new MoveOn-style group that will mobilize members all over the world to take action on global issues. Avaaz -- the word means "voice" in Urdu, Hindi, Farsi and several other languages -- launches its first campaign today, with a petition and TV adon climate change. The TV spot -- the first genuinely global political TV ad -- shows world leaders snoozing in their bedrooms, while climate disaster rages outside; it begins airing in Washington, D.C. today, and over the next few weeks will show in Paris, Berlin and Delhi. Avaaz begins with 900,000 members (combining the international lists of its two founding organizations, MoveOn and Res Publica, another global citizens' group), and will operate on four continents. The petition urges the global leaders to "set binding global targets" for carbon emissions.

Today I met two of the creative minds behind this project, executive director Ricken Patel and campaign director Tom Perriello (the only American on the team). Patel explains that Avaaz emerged out of "a sense that a real global consciousness is emerging." Founders are also excited by the idea of using technology to mobilize a global citizenry, with not only the Internet, but text-messaging proving to be a startlingly effective means of political communication, especially in the Third World. Of the team behind Avaaz, Perriello observes, "Most of us have policy or diplomacy backgrounds, as well as activist, so the hope is that we will be doing these things at key diplomatic moments." For instance, the climate change campaign is launching just in time for the G8 meeting.

Avaaz also expects to take up Middle East politics (war in Iraq, the need for an Israel-Palestine peace process, potential war with Iran, and Guantanamo), and global poverty. Like climate change, these are issues on which world leaders seem way out of step with most citizens, who are craving sensible solutions. "There is such a huge gap," says Patel, "between the world most people want, and the world we've got." Avaaz ambitiously aspires to narrow that gap.

Liza Featherstone is a journalist based in New York City. She is the co-author of "Students Against Sweatshops: The Making of a Movement" (Verso, 2002) and author of "Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker's Rights at Wal-Mart" (Basic, 2004).

Apple products - Uma combinação nada verde

Sleek looks, amazing design, meticulous attention to detail. So what's with the toxic chemicals inside, short life spans and allowing their products to be dumped in Asia?

None of this fits with Apple's iLife image, and none of this is making Apple a successful company. So why hasn't Steve improved Apple's design?

Well it seems Apple just doesn't prioritize environmental concerns. Sure, they have a nice Environment section on their website. But it's not linked from the front page, and it's hard to find unless you know where to look. Of course it says how great Apple's policies are. But if you look under the hood, Apple's policies are as ugly as a beige box circa 1989.

Clique no título e entenda as demandas do Greenpeace sobre a empresa Apple.

Gore Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
The Associated Press
Thursday 01 February 2007

He "has put climate change on the agenda," two Norwegian sponsors say.

Oslo, Norway - Former Vice President Al Gore was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday.

"A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference," Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told The Associated Press.

Brende said he joined political opponent Heidi Soerensen of the Socialist Left Party to nominate Gore as well as Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier before the nomination deadline expired Thursday.

"Al Gore, like no other, has put climate change on the agenda. Gore uses his position to get politicians to understand, while Sheila works from the ground up," Brende said.

"I think climate change is the biggest challenge we face in this century," Brende said.

During eight years as Bill Clinton's vice president, Gore pushed for climate measures, including the Kyoto Treaty. Since leaving office in 2001 he has campaigned worldwide, including with his Oscar-nominated documentary on climate change called "An Inconvenient Truth."

Norwegian lawmakers are among the thousands of people and groups with rights to nominate Nobel candidates. Others include members of national governments, past laureates, members of the awards committee and its staff, and many university professors.

The winner is traditionally announced in mid-October, with the prize always presented on the Dec. 10 anniversary of the death of its creator, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel.

The secretive Nobel committee never comments on specific nominations, but members often note that anyone can be nominated. Last year, there were 191 nominations for the prize that went to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded to help the poor.

Other announced nominations for the 2007 prize include Vietnamese Monk Thich Quang Do and Sail Training International, a British-based charity helping young people develop through sailing.

The five-member Norwegian awards committee accepts proposals postmarked by Feb. 1 and expects a rough count of nominations on Feb. 12.

In 2004, the Nobel Peace Prize went to Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai, which Brende said shows the award committee's focus on ecological problems as a source of conflict.

A New, Green Vision for Trade is Needed, Conservation Groups SayStatement of Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JANUARY 30, 2007
12:05 PM

WASHINGTON - January 30 - In his speech today in Peoria, Illinois on the economy, President Bush is expected to call for an extension of Fast Track trade negotiating authority. Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club issued the following statement:

"Trade done right can help lift living standards and promote sustainable development. Unfortunately, this administration cannot be counted on to protect the environment in trade agreements without greater oversight from Congress and the public. Any authority granted to President Bush must ensure that trade deals will have strong environmental rules that can be guaranteed through the democratic process.

"The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has been negotiating bilateral trade agreements one after another with some of the planet's most biologically rich and diverse countries, including Peru, Colombia and Malaysia - and a deal with Indonesia is in the works. Until now, the USTR has only felt obliged to include weak environmental provisions filled with gaps and loopholes.

"Congress must supply the administration with a more detailed roadmap for negotiating trade agreements that safeguard the environment. The environmental chapters of trade agreements must incorporate provisions that will ensure enforcement of international environmental standards and prohibit the rampant trade in illegal timber that is destroying our world’s forests. Trade agreements must also promote safe and healthy communities in the U.S. and abroad by rewriting rules that currently allow challenges to environmental and public health laws and regulations.

"As Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee highlighted recently in a letter to United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab, trade deals will have to effectively address these environmental concerns if a consensus on trade policy is to be built. If President Bush wants renewed trade authority, he must heed these voices."

CONTACT: Sierra Club
Joe Vickless, Defenders of Wildlife, (202) 772-0237, jvickless@defenders.org
David Waskow, Friends of the Earth, (202) 492-4660
Virginia Cramer, Sierra Club, (202) 675-6279

Organics spreading to snack food aisles
Do MSNBC.

Companies offer natural, organic versions of chips, cookies, mac & cheese
By Allison Linn, Senior writer

Kathy Blackman has been seeking out organic and natural foods for decades, regularly feeding her family cereals, canned goods and produce free of things like pesticides.



But that doesn’t mean Blackman rules out favorite American indulgences like macaroni and cheese. It’s just that, instead of picking up a conventional brand that may have food dyes or preservatives, she favors an organic or natural version such as Annie’s — even though she knows it may not save her any calories.

“Macaroni and cheese is macaroni and cheese,” she said recently while preparing to load up on groceries at a PCC Natural Markets in Seattle.

There was a time when the terms “organic” and “natural” conjured up images of bins of whole grains and uncooked beans, alongside a few pock-marked apples and some wheat germ. These days, the gleaming aisles of Whole Foods and other high-end and natural grocers offer organic alternatives for everything from mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese to chocolate cookies and pretzels.

Consumers are gobbling up snacks such as natural colas and organic chips amid increasing overall interest in such foods. The fast-growing U.S. organic food industry accounted for $13.8 billion in sales in 2005, representing about 2.5 percent of total U.S. food sales, according to the Organic Trade Association. The group expects sales to rise another 14 percent in 2006, although exact figures haven't been tallied.

Harry Balzer, vice president with the research firm NPD Group, said 22 percent of people his company surveyed between June and August had eaten an organic product in the last two weeks. He expects interest in organics to only increase, in part because it’s a health craze that let’s people indulge to a degree, rather than cut back.

“The health trend this time is, ‘What can we add to our diet?’ ” he said.

That’s been good news for the food industry because it offers a new venue to potentially boost sales. But the trend raises concerns for some nutrition experts, who worry that people don’t realize that even organic snacks can still be packed with as many calories and fat as more traditional junk food.

“You still need to read the food label,” said Christine McKinney, a registered dietician with Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. “Just because it’s organic doesn’t meant it’s healthy.”

The companies that produce such food acknowledge that not all their offerings are lower in fat or calories than conventional competitors. Still, many say that they are providing people with more natural ingredients that they believe are healthier. Some also say some of their offerings can be lower in sodium and other ingredients than mainstream competitors.

“Our snack foods are in some ways better for you,” said Maureen Putman, chief marketing officer for Hain Celestial Group Inc., whose extensive product line includes Garden of Eatin’ chips, among other snacks.

Companies also say that people are drawn to their products for other reasons besides just calorie counting. John Foraker, chief executive of Homegrown Naturals Inc., whose products include Annie’s macaroni and cheese offerings, said he hears from lots of customers who like to know they are supporting a privately held company with a similar set of values.

Others just say they like the food better.

“What consumers will tell you is that they want lower fat, lower sodium ... but what they will ultimately buy is what tastes good,” Foraker said.

Broader interest in organic and natural foods has fueled strong sales growth for companies like Annie’s. Foraker said his company is expecting revenue of more than $100 million for the company’s fiscal year ending in March of 2008, boosted by increased interest from grocery chains and even discounters like Costco and Wal-Mart.

“Over the last five years, natural and organic foods have become so much more of a mainstream concept,” Foraker said.

Amy’s Kitchen, which makes frozen pizzas, pastas and other products using organic ingredients, expects revenue to hit $200 million in the company’s fiscal year ending in June, a fact that surprises even company co-owner Andy Berliner.

“We thought this was going to be a $3 million business when we started,” he said.

CONTINUED: Mainstream appeal growing
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Capa da Business Week de outubro de 2006:
Look Who's Vying for the Organic Dollar

Forget the farmers' market. Organic food has become big business, generating about $37 billion in sales worldwide last year. Here are some of the big players in the game.