I've just read a wonderful book about a teen in Africa who built his
own windpower generator.
http://www.djcline.com/2009/11/25/the-boy-who-harnessed-the-wind/
An inspiring story for young engineers,
-DJ

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Future Salon Lovers,

Blog post with the questions embedded: http://bit.ly/413Bk0

Last week was the last Future Salon for this year. Even though I wasn't able to
participate, I hear John Smart did a great job hosting and it was a big
success.Thank you. It is great to have people like John to carry the torch.

Actually it would be even better, if more people that like what the Future Salon
is doing would join. With your extra push, we are convinced, it will be even
better next year.

"Yes, but how much effort will it be?" I hear you think ;-) No one has time
these days. We want to make it as easy and efficient as possible.

Early December we will have an evening meeting where we talk about the general
direction and split up the months between us. Depending on how many people we
are, you focus on your theme and month, host that month and that is it.

The overarching theme of the Future Salon is:
Boldly creating a world that works for us all.

Therefore we are not covering the latest gadgets at our salons. We are
interested in taking a look at larger trends, limits of our own human
capabilities and how to overcome them. What can be done to create a more just
society that gives opportunities to everyone involved to grow to their full
potential?

If that aligns with your own vision and interests, please fill out the following
couple of questions and we will contact you regarding the December meeting.

Of course filling out this form doesn't commit you to anything. We know that
even with the best intentions life has the tendency to catch up with and sweep
you into a different direction than planned.
(Live is what happens while you are making other plans ;-)

Here is the link to the questions:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dHhYLTdlR3NUaEdPOHFEWmJadE\
R0ZlE6MA

Looking forward to another exciting Future Salon year, Mark.

Hi Futurists,

Quick reminder Don't miss the Fit Body Fit Soul Future Salon next Tuesday
November 10:
http://www.futuresalon.org/2009/09/fit-body-fit-soul-future-salo.html

I finally posted the second part of the Brain Plasticity Future Salon video:
http://www.futuresalon.org/2009/10/video-brain-plasticity-future-salon-with-prof\
essor-michael-merzenich-part-2.html

You may want to jump to minute 44 where he lists 13 elements from as he says
1000s that have an influence on our brain plasticity development in ways that we
don't yet comprehend and why he thinks that we are not evolved enough to handle
the pace of development that we are jumping in literally head first:

We are driving culture too fast and are too dump to understand the consequences.

    1. Cutting umbilical cord too early: Leads to 2 minutes of no oxygen to the
brain, which is a suspect for the rise in autism.
    2. Only very few drugs have been studied regarding their influence on the
brain.
    3. Chemical safety regulations: 100s of 1000s of chemicals are created every
year and they are only banned if there is a clear demonstration of harm.
    4. Car seats (He put that one up for fun). Is it a good idea to put our
little kids into little prisons? Same with making our babies sleep on their
back. Consequence is that the baby is slower in regards to crawling.
       His prediction: We will have a female president in the future and she will
be very authoritarian because of the restrictions put on her via our current car
seats.
       The interest of our children to go to the outdoors or to the parks will
continue to decline because our children don't see what is happening outside of
the car window.
       We come from growing up in the wilderness and we are now wilderness
deprived.
    5. We have paved our ways. We have hard shoes to take away the unevenness.
Our brains are amazing at balancing out the differences and it actually burns
lots of calories doing it, but we don't want hardship. It is not a surprise that
it has been proven, that people living on cobble stone streets are healthier. It
is one of the reasons why in old age we are frailer than we should be. We were
not designed for paved roads.
    6. Hand held devices.
    7. We systematically make our children being afraid of all adults. What a
screwy idea to make every child being afraid of every adult. It's insane.
    8. TV addiction
    9. Taking executive control of our children's lives. [24 hour surveillance.]
Shouldn't that be one of your main goals to give our kids the executive control
of their lives?
   10. Video games.
   11. Narcissism: One word Twitter.  [Comment: That on a day when I twitter more
than ever ;-)] Let's all be really self-interested. Let's practice many hours a
day on how cool we are.
   12. Pornography and media: Is that really a good idea? Praying to the lowest
denominator?
   13. By using GPS your brain shrinks. London taxi drivers are able to pass the
license test after 3 years of studying, aka driving around on scooters to
memorize streets. One year after introducing GPS the London taxi driver's
extended brain shrunk back to the usual size. [Comment: There is always a
trade-off. Since we can read, we can't remember as good as we used to. We just
didn't know how big the difference is for your brain. Another proof of use it or
loose it.]

One of our problems is, that these things are just too complicated to do
anything about them.

We have about 1000 things that are really important, most of them we don't even
know about. Individually we may know about one of them deeply, may be a handful,
but that is it.

We have to figure out how we as a society get true expertise around these
problems to resolve them and we have to figure out how by accepting our
individual limitations we can accept societal solutions.

We have a long long way to go to do that and we may be incapable to do it,
because remember we are inherently selfish, a fundamental problem that we have
to deal with.

We are at the beginning of enlightenment or disaster. Somehow we have to bring
science and knowledge back into this for a true understanding of what we are.

In a sense the only hope we have really is to identify what we are and accept
what we are with our limitations.

Food for thought, Mark.