#you may not be the only continent who uses the metric system

[warriorcatsofficialfacts]

"the europeans" did you know that most of the world uses kg and meters including south America. unitedstatians are not beating the uneducated idiot burger allegations.

all these anons are doing is proving america truly is the greatest nation in the world, as it is becoming more and more apparent that we are in fact the only nation where people make jokes! god bless

#i'm sorry to all the followers i get like five of these a week and i delete them but like #the sheer dumbass condescension of europeans (because it is damn near universally europeans who make these comments) is so funny #you may not be the only continent who uses the metric system #but you sure are the only continent who gets this pissy when people make fun of it lmao

[mariacallous]

There was no single moment when the democratic backsliding began in Hungary. There were no shots fired, no tanks in the streets. “Orbán doesn’t need to kill us, he doesn’t need to jail us,” Tibor Dessewffy, a sociology professor at Eötvös Loránd University, told me. “He just keeps narrowing the space of public life. It’s what’s happening in your country, too—the frog isn’t boiling yet, but the water is getting hotter.” He acknowledged that the U.S. has safeguards that Hungary does not: the two-party system, which might forestall a slide into perennial single-party rule; the American Constitution, which is far more difficult to amend. Still, it wasn’t hard for him to imagine Americans a decade hence being, in some respects, roughly where the Hungarians are today. “I’m sorry to tell you, I’m your worst nightmare,” Dessewffy said, with a wry smile. As worst nightmares went, I had to admit, it didn’t seem so bad at first glance. He was sitting in a placid garden, enjoying a lemonade, wearing cargo shorts. “This is maybe the strangest part,” he said. “Even my parents, who lived under Stalin, still drank lemonade, still went swimming in the lake on a hot day, still fell in love. In the nightmare scenario, you still have a life, even if you feel somewhat guilty about it.”

Lee Drutman, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, tweeted last year, “Anybody serious about commenting on the state of US democracy should start reading more about Hungary.” In other words, not only can it happen here but, if you look at certain metrics, it’s already started happening. Republicans may not be able to rewrite the Constitution, but they can exploit existing loopholes, replace state election officials with Party loyalists, submit alternative slates of electors, and pack federal courts with sympathetic judges. Representation in Hungary has grown less proportional in recent years, thanks to gerrymandering and other tweaks to the electoral rules. In April, Fidesz got fifty-four per cent of the vote but won eighty-three per cent of the districts. “At that level of malapportionment, you’d be hard pressed to find a good-faith political scientist who would call that country a true democracy,” Drutman told me. “The trends in the U.S. are going very quickly in the same direction. It’s completely possible that the Republican Party could control the House, the Senate, and the White House in 2025, despite losing the popular vote in every case. Is that a democracy?”

In 2018, Steve Bannon, after he was fired from the Trump Administration, went on a kind of European tour, giving paid talks and meeting with nationalist allies across the Continent. In May, he stopped in Budapest. One of his hosts there was the XXI Century Institute, a think tank with close ties to the Orbán administration. “I can tell, Viktor Orbán triggers ’em like Trump,” Bannon said onstage, flashing a rare smile. “He was Trump before Trump.” After his speech, he joined his hosts for a dinner cruise on the Danube. (The cruise was captured in unreleased footage from the documentary “The Brink.” Bannon’s spokesperson stopped responding to requests for comment.) On board, Bannon met Miklós Szánthó, sipping a beer and watching the sun set, who mentioned that he ran a “conservative, center-right think tank” that opposed “N.G.O.s financed by the Open Society network.”

“Oh, my God, Soros!” Bannon said. “You guys beat him up badly here.” Szánthó accepted the praise with a stoic grin. Bannon went on, “We love to take lessons from you guys in the U.S.”

In 2018, “Trump before Trump” was the highest compliment that Bannon could think to pay Orbán. In 2022, many on the American right are trying to anticipate what a Trump after Trump might look like. Orbán provides one potential answer. Even Trump’s putative allies will admit, in private, that he was a lazy, feckless leader. They wanted an Augustus; they got a Caligula. In theory, Trump was amenable to dismantling the administrative state, to pushing norms and institutions beyond their breaking points, even to reaping the benefits of a full autocratic breakthrough. But, instead of laying out long-term strategies to wrest control of key levers of power, he tweeted, and watched TV, and whined on the phone about how his tin-pot insurrection schemes weren’t coming to fruition. What would happen if the Republican Party were led by an American Orbán, someone with the patience to envision a semi-authoritarian future and the diligence and the ruthlessness to achieve it?

In 2018, Patrick Deneen’s book “Why Liberalism Failed” was admired by David Brooks and Barack Obama. Last year, Deneen founded a hard-right Substack called the Postliberal Order, on which he argued that right-wing populists had not gone nearly far enough—that American conservatism should abandon its “defensive crouch.” One of his co-authors wrote a post from Budapest, offering an example of how this could work in practice: “It’s clear that Hungarian conservatism is not defensive.” J. D. Vance has voiced admiration for Orbán’s pro-natalist family policies, adding, “Why can’t we do that here?” Rod Dreher told me, “Seeing what Vance is saying, and what Ron DeSantis is actually doing in Florida, the concept of American Orbánism starts to make sense. I don’t want to overstate what they’ll be able to accomplish, given the constitutional impediments and all, but DeSantis is already using the power of the state to push back against woke capitalism, against the crazy gender stuff.” According to Dreher, what the Republican Party needs is “a leader with Orbán’s vision—someone who can build on what Trumpism accomplished, without the egomania and the inattention to policy, and who is not afraid to step on the liberals’ toes.”

In common parlance, the opposite of “liberal” is “conservative.” In political-science terms, illiberalism means something more radical: a challenge to the very rules of the game. There are many valid critiques of liberalism, from the left and the right, but Orbán’s admirers have trouble articulating how they could install a post-liberal American state without breaking a few eggs (civil rights, fair elections, possibly the democratic experiment itself). “The central insight of twentieth-century conservatism is that you work within the liberal order—limited government, free movement of capital, all of that—even when it’s frustrating,” Andrew Sullivan said. “If you just give away the game and try to seize as much power as possible, then what you’re doing is no longer conservative, and, in my view, you’re making a grave, historic mistake.” Lauren Stokes, the Northwestern historian, is a leftist with her own radical critiques of liberalism; nonetheless, she, too, thinks that the right-wing post-liberals are playing with fire. “By hitching themselves to someone who has put himself forward as a post-liberal intellectual, I think American conservatives are starting to give themselves permission to discard liberal norms,” Stokes told me. “When a Hungarian court does something Orbán doesn’t like—something too pro-queer, too pro-immigrant—he can just say, ‘This court is an enemy of the people, I don’t have to listen to it.’ I think Republicans are setting themselves up to adopt a similar logic: if the system gives me a result I don’t like, I don’t have to abide by it.”

Does Hungary Offer a Glimpse of Our Authoritarian Future?

[just-an-enby-lemon]

American things that I hate (I promisse I love my american moots and you guys have some cool things, like DC and smores):

- That they use the terms America and american to define themselfs when it's actually the name of the whole continent.

- Their metric system. Specially MILES. I hate miles (and foot and inches). I'm not gonna walk 500 miles, I'm gonna walk aproximadely 804 killometers like a normal person.

- That they gave the rest of the world amazing things like: wars over petrol, the south americas dicatorships, the silicon vallew culture, televangelits and the alt-right.

- Kanye West, Chris Pratt and similar celebrities.

- Trisha Paytas. She deserves a place just for her.

- Chihuahuas. They are stronger than they look and they scare the shit out of me and then as if it wasn't enough people will often laugh over the fact I'm terrifield of a chihuahua.

- That you guys don't have universal health care. Just the fact that when someone gets in an accident or passes out or is hurt after trying to kill themselfs or someone finds an injuried or disoriented person on the streets they teach you to call the police as a first response because the person may not have money for an ambulance is wild for me and probably took lifes. Brazil's universal healthcare is not the best (mostly because of corruption and bad use of public money) but it's centuries better.

- That your entertament industry causes problem to strugglying writers, actors and other artists to find a ground because their native country preffers to import american things. Is not only fault of the U.S propaganda so I don't hate it that much in relation to the U.S.

- Hamilton. The songs are good. But I think it's overrated. Also I genuinally don't get the obcession with the founding fathers, maybe is because my country nacionalism is based on hating most of our historical "heros" and villans alike and not knowing the ones who were genuine heros.

- Mount Hushmore. Stupid fucking rock. People could have sculpted anything but they choose a bunch of probably racist old man and one day when the alliens find that they will at first think all humans religiosly pray to the big rock heads. Also wasn't it sacret native american grounds?

- American Football. Firstly you aren't even using your foot. Second that ball is weird as hell. Thridly why? Fourth head injuries everywhere.

- Baseball. Okay I don't hate it I just don't get it.

(On the other hand Basketball is great and American Basketball is perfection. I love the NBA)

- All Adam Sandler movies. All of them. Yes, even that one.

- Jim Carrey.

- Donald Trump and Trumpism (or the thing that elected Bolsonaro)

- American poems (JK, I actually love American poetry as much as brazilian poetry and just wanted to say one nice thing about america after hating on a whole country soo much)

#america #usa #us #i don't even know #this is a joke #all contries have bad things #brazil has loads of them #this is just a joke #your country selled the american dream soo much to people on underdeveloped countries that we ended up disapointed by reality #ergo the jokes #smores ARE the best thing ever and you are genius

[docmary]

The politics of a pandemic, how not to manage coronavirus

No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friend's Or of thine own were: Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls.

It tolls for thee.

John Donne

1624

The poet John Donne warned of the dangers of isolation and imagining oneself as self-sufficient, without need of community. It was true 500 years ago; it still holds true today. No man is an island…every man is a part of the main. As wave upon wave of SARS-CoV-2 reached every continent, even Antarctica, most of us have tried to isolate ourselves on this crowded planet - with mixed results.

As of May 30, 2021, by every metric, the United States was leading the world in the number of cases and deaths from COVD-19. Brazil and India are catching up quickly. In the US, the underlying tension between public health and personal liberty has had disastrous consequences. As successful as the vaccine roll-out has been, and even with the numbers of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths dropping, this is no time to be complacent.

India, with a population of over 1 billion, and Brazil, a pariah among countries in Latin America for its poor response to the pandemic, cause or should cause great concern to everyone everywhere. Not having the resources of rich countries, they will require help to manage the tragic situation their leaders have put their populations in and it is in our interest to do so because...the bell tolls for thee.

India

When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020, there had been 330,000 cases and 30,000 deaths from SARS-CoV-2 reported worldwide. In the early days of the pandemic, India was considered a model of how to manage the worst public health crisis in recent memory. India responded with a strict lockdown. International flights and exports of masks, ventilators, and certain medicines were banned. As a result, India did not see the same initial explosion in new cases and deaths compared to other countries.

Three months later, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi began easing lockdown restrictions - like the American football player who does the end-zone dance on the two-yard line—not a good idea. When the lockdown lifted, many Indians stopped taking precautions. Mr. Modi allowed large gatherings, including campaigns in state elections that he attended, without wearing a mask, at rallies of thousands of mask-less supporters, to help his governing Bharatiya Janata party. Large religious festivals resumed drawing millions of people as well. By July 2020, India had seen 600,000 cases and 17,834 deaths due to COVID. An editorial from The Lancet, said that Mr. Modi “seemed more intent on removing criticism” on social media than “trying to control the pandemic.” Sound familiar?

As recently as March 2021, India’s health minister assured the public that they had reached the pandemic’s “endgame”.

The New York Times reported in May 2021 that India was responsible for more than half of the world’s daily COVID cases, setting a record-breaking pace of 400,000 new cases in one day. Researchers believe the B.1.1.7 variant and the delta variant, which are also major variants in Britain and the US, are to blame for the surge. Clinics across India report desperate shortages of hospital beds, protective equipment, and oxygen.[1]

Just to add to the global disaster, India is one of the world’s leading vaccine manufacturers. It is struggling to inoculate its own citizens; less than 10% of Indians have gotten even one dose.[2] In September 2020, Serum Institute of India (SII) received $150 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to accelerate production of Oxford University’s AstraZenica (AZ) vaccine and the American vaccine Novavax as soon as the WHO granted regulatory approval. Under the original terms of the agreement, 50% of vaccines would be earmarked for India and the remainder would go to other low- and middle-income countries.[3]Currently, exports of vaccines from India have been shut down.

Brazil

In an editorial from The Lancet, dated May 9, 2020, the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsanoro, was criticized for allowing the SARS-CoV-2 virus to spread widely while presenting himself as a “messiah” touting unproven medicines like hydroxychloroquine, with support from his rightwing allies.

At the time, Brazil had the most cases (105,000) and deaths (72,88) in Latin America. Estimates suggest the death rate was doubling every five days. When asked by a reporter about the rapidly increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases, Mr. Bolsanaro responded: “So what? What do you want me to do?”[4]

In March 2021, Brazil’s pandemic spiraled out of control. Its Latin American neighbors grounded flights, closed land borders, and regional sports events were canceled in attempts to stop the P.1 variant (and approximately 90 other variants) from spreading to their populations.

The British Medical Journal reported that 400,000 Brazilians have died from COVID-19—13% of deaths worldwide.[5] Some models predict the death toll in Brazil will reach half a million this month. That trajectory could be an indicator for what is to come for its neighbors. As Paraguay’s director of health surveillance, Guillermo Sequera, has said: “When Brazil sneezes, Paraguay gets a cold.”[6]

COVAX

With a fast-moving pandemic, no one is safe, unless everyone is safe.

author unknown. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator/covax

COVAX is an initiative dedicated to equitable access to a vaccine, particularly to healthcare workers and those most at risk. To date (5/31/2021), COVAX has shipped more than 77 million COVID-19 vaccines to 127 participants. It is co-led by[7]:

CEPI-Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations. The governing board has 12 voting members; four investors and eight independent members with competencies in industry, global health, science, resource mobilization, and finance—and five observers (17 total). Financial support comes from public sources including US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance-a public/private partnership which has helped to vaccinate 760 million children in the world’s poorest countries.[8] It ensures that infrastructure is in place and technical support is available to make sure that COVID-19 vaccines can be safely delivered to support the participation of 92 lower-middle and lower-income economies. It is part of the health systems work of Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator effort, focusing on areas where it has expertise and experience, such as keeping vaccines at the correct temperature.

World Health Organization (WHO)

United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF)

COVAX hopes to get 280 million doses of vaccines to Latin America but has been hit with delays to eight manufacturers (including SII) it has deals with and does not expect to deliver them until the end of 2021.[8]This has led South American nations to look to China’s Coronavac and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine supplies. One study found that Coronovac was only 50% effective after a single dose. The Biden administration has pledged to purchase 500 million doses of Pfizer BioNTech vaccine to give to COVAX; the first 200 million doses will be distributed this year, with the subsequent 300 million in the first half of next year.[10]

My Take

In what can only be called being one step ahead of the game, armed robbers in Hong Kong stole $16,000 worth of toilet paper as coronavirus sparked panic-buying of essential goods a month before WHO declared a global pandemic in March 2020.[11] (Good times)

In July 2020, President Trump formally notified Congress and the United Nations that the US was withdrawing from WHO because of course he did.

Several articles, including one from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)[12] have compared weekly deaths in the US that would be expected from historical trends with COVID and non-COVID deaths from March 2020 until January 2021. There was an increase of 22.9% of all-cause mortality. This far exceeds expectations. Excess deaths attributed to non-COVID causes could be the result of deaths that were, in fact, COVID but misclassified. They might also be due to delayed care, an overwhelmed healthcare system, or behavioral health crises. On the other side of the ledger, no doubt at least some of the deaths that would have been anticipated from non-COVID causes might have died from the coronavirus instead. Which is to say, these are at best estimates of the mortality rates. During surges in various parts of the US, deaths from several non-COVID diseases like heart disease and Alzheimer’s increased. Either way, the excess deaths could have been helped with a better response to the pandemic early on.[13]

For those “give me liberty, or give me death” fans, do I really need to point out that Patrick Henry was referring to his own death, not the deaths of millions all over the world? My parents’ generation made many sacrifices during WWII, including blood and treasure, and considered it worth the price to defeat Hitler. Wearing a mask to defeat a virus? Really? Who have we become?

It comes as a surprise to no one that the countries with the largest death tolls to date, the US, India, and Brazil, are also countries in which partisan politics was the priority over public health measures. It isn’t a good idea. Why don’t we just stop?

[1] What to know about India’s coronavirus crisis. What is behind the explosion of new coronavirus cases that is overwhelming the South Asian country? NY Times, May 25, 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/article/india-coronavirus-cases-deaths.html

[2] ibid

[3]Raghavan, P. 2020. $150 million dollar shot for serum production of COVID vaccine, India Express.

[4]Lancet editorial. September 19, 2020. COVID-19 in Brazil: “So what?”, Lancet, 395: 1461. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(20)31095-3

[5]Taylor, L. 5/20/2021. COVID-19: How the Brazilian variant took hold of South America, BMJ 2021, 373: n1277. doi: 10.1136/bmj.n1277

[6]ibid

[7]World Health Organization: COVAX Working for global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator/covax

[8]Raghavan. Op cit.

[9]Taylor. Op cit.

[10] Page, T, Rauhala, E. Jun 9, 2021. Biden administration to buy 500 million Pfizer coronavirus vaccine doses to donate to the world, Washington Post, retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-vaccine-donate/2021/06/09/c2744674-c934-11eb-93fa-9053a95eb9f2_story.html

[11]www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article1

[12]Woolf, SH, Chapman, DH, Sabo, RT, Zimmerman, EB. May 4,2021.Excess deaths from COVID-19 and other causes in the US, March 1 2020, to January 2, 2021,JAMA, 325(17): 1786-1789. doi: 10.1001/jama.2021.5199

[13]ibid

#COVID-19 #Brazil #India #COVAX #vaccine #AstraZeneca #PfizerBioNTech

[solsarin]

how many percentage of pure water is on earthBy

how many percentage of pure water is on earthBy

Hello dear friends, thank you for choosing us. In this post on the solsarin site, we will talk about “ how many percentage of pure water is on earth  “.

Stay with us. Thank you for your choice.

What percent of Earth is water?

The Earth is often compared to a majestic blue marble, especially by those privileged few who have gazed upon it from orbit. This is due to the prevalence of water on the planet’s surface. While water itself is not blue, water gives off blue light upon reflection.

For those of us confined to living on the surface, the fact that our world is mostly covered in water is a well known fact. But how much of our planet is made up of water, exactly? Like most facts pertaining to our world, the answer is a little more complicated than you might think, and takes into account a number of different qualifications.

In simplest terms, water makes up about 71% of the Earth’s surface, while the other 29% consists of continents and islands.

To break the numbers down

To break the numbers down, 96.5% of all the Earth’s water is contained within the oceans as salt water, while the remaining 3.5% is freshwater lakes and frozen water locked up in glaciers and the polar ice caps. Of that fresh water, almost all of it takes the form of ice: 69% of it, to be exact. If you could melt all that ice, and the Earth’s surface was perfectly smooth, the sea levels would rise to an altitude of 2.7 km.

Aside from the water that exists in ice form, there is also the staggering amount of water that exists beneath the Earth’s surface. If you were to gather all the Earth’s fresh water together as a single mass (as shown in the image above) it is estimated that it would measure some 1,386 million cubic kilometers (km3) in volume.

Meanwhile

Meanwhile, the amount of water that exists as groundwater, rivers, lakes, and streams would constitute just over 10.6 million km3, which works out to a little over 0.7%. Seen in this context, the limited and precious nature of freshwater becomes truly clear.

But how much of Earth is water—how much water contributes to the actual mass of the planet? This includes not just the surface of the Earth, but inside as well. Scientists calculate that the total mass of the oceans on Earth is 1.35 x 1018 metric tonnes, which is 1/4400 the total mass of the Earth. In other words, while the oceans cover 71% of the Earth’s surface, they only account for 0.02% of our planet’s total mass.

The origin of water on the Earth’s surface

The origin of water on the Earth’s surface, as well as the fact that it has more water than any other rocky planet in the Solar System, are two of long-standing mysteries concerning our planet.

Not that long ago, it was believed that our planet formed dry some 4.6 billion years ago, with high-energy impacts creating a molten surface on the infant Earth. According to this theory, water was brought to the world’s oceans thanks to icy comets, trans-Neptunian objects or water-rich meteoroids (protoplanets) from the outer reaches of the main asteroid belt colliding with the Earth.

the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole

However, more recent research conducted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, has pushed the date of these origins back further. According to this new study, the world’s oceans also date back 4.6 billion years, when all the worlds of the inner Solar System were still forming.

This conclusion was reached by examining meteorites thought to have formed at different times in the history of the Solar System. Carbonaceous chondrite, the oldest meteorites that have been dated to the very earliest days of the Solar System, were found to have the same chemistry as those originating from protoplanets like Vesta. This includes a significance presence of water.

These meteorites are dated to the same epoch in which water was believed to have formed on Earth – some 11 million years after the formation of the Solar System. In short, it now appears that meteorites were depositing water on Earth in its earliest days.

While not ruling out the possibility that some of the water that covers 71 percent of Earth today may have arrived later, these findings suggest that there was enough already here for life to have begun earlier than thought.

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Earth’s Freshwater

Most people have heard Earth referred to as “the water planet.” With that name comes the rightful image of a world with plentiful water. In photographs taken from space, we can see that our planet has more water than land. However, of all the water on Earth, more than 99 percent of Earth’s water is unusable by humans and many other living things – only about 0.3 percent of our fresh water is found in the surface water of lakes, rivers and swamps.The teacher guide describes our current understanding of water cycling and freshwater issues that affect natural and human communities.

Most water in Earth’s atmosphere

Most water in Earth’s atmosphere and crust comes from saline seawater, while fresh water accounts for nearly 1% of the total. The vast bulk of the water on Earth is saline or salt water, with an average salinity of 35‰ (or 4.5%, roughly equivalent to 34 grams of salts in 1 kg of seawater), though this varies slightly according to the amount of runoff received from surrounding land. In all, water from oceans and marginal seas, saline groundwater and water from saline closed lakes amount to over 97% of the water on Earth, though no closed lake stores a globally significant amount of water. Saline groundwater is seldom considered except when evaluating water quality in arid regions.

The remainder of Earth’s water constitutes the planet’s fresh water resource. Typically, fresh water is defined as water with a salinity of less than 1 percent that of the oceans – i.e. below around 0.35‰. Water with a salinity between this level and 1‰ is typically referred to as marginal water because it is marginal for many uses by humans and animals. The ratio of salt water to fresh water on Earth is around 50 to 1.

The planet’s fresh water

The planet’s fresh water is also very unevenly distributed. Although in warm periods such as the Mesozoic and Paleogene when there were no glaciers anywhere on the planet all fresh water was found in rivers and streams, today most fresh water exists in the form of ice, snow, groundwater and soil moisture, with only 0.3% in liquid form on the surface. Of the liquid surface fresh water, 87% is contained in lakes, 11% in swamps, and only 2% in rivers. Small quantities of water also exist in the atmosphere and in living beings. Of these sources, only river water is generally valuable.

Although the total volume of groundwater is known to be much greater than that of river runoff, a large proportion of this groundwater is saline and should therefore be classified with the saline water above. There is also a lot of fossil groundwater in arid regions that has never been renewed for thousands of years; this must not be seen as renewable water.

Lakes

Most lakes are in very inhospitable regions such as the glacial lakes of Canada, Lake Baikal in Russia, Lake Khövsgöl in Mongolia, and the African Great Lakes. The North American Great Lakes, which contain 21% of the world’s fresh water by volume,[5][6][7] are the exception. They are located in a hospitable region, which is heavily populated. The Great Lakes Basin is home to 33 million people.[8] The Canadian cities of Toronto, Hamilton, St. Catharines, Niagara, Oshawa, Windsor, Barrie, and Kingston and the U.S. cities of Duluth, Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Rochester, are all located on shores of the Great Lakes.

ressource: wikipedia

[agritecture]

Big Data Suggests Big Potential For Urban Farming

CONTENT SOURCED FROM CITYLAB

Gotham Greens’ boxed lettuces have been popping up on the shelves of high-end grocers in New York and the Upper Midwest since 2009, and with names like “Windy City Crunch,” “Queens Crisp,” and “Blooming Brooklyn Iceberg,” it’s clear the company is selling a story as much as it is selling salad.

Grown in hydroponic greenhouses on the rooftops of buildings in New York and Chicago, the greens are shipped to nearby stores and restaurants within hours of being harvested. That means a fresher product, less spoilage, and lower transportation emissions than a similar rural operation might have—plus, for the customer, the warm feeling of participating in a local food web.

“As a company, we want to connect urban residents to their food, with produce grown a few short miles from where you are,” said Viraj Puri, Gotham Greens’ co-founder and CEO.

Gotham Greens’ appealing narrative and eight-figure annual revenues suggest a healthy future for urban agriculture. But while it makes intuitive sense that growing crops as close as possible to the people who will eat them is more environmentally friendly than shipping them across continents, evidence that urban agriculture is good for the environment has been harder to pin down.

A widely cited 2008 study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that transportation from producer to store only accounts for 4 percent of food’s total greenhouse gas emissions, which calls into question the concern over “food miles.��� Meanwhile, some forms of urban farming may be more energy-intensive than rural agriculture, especially indoor vertical farms that rely on artificial lighting and climate control.

An operation like Gotham Greens can recycle water through its hydroponic system, but outdoor farms such as the ones sprouting on vacant lots in Detroit usually require irrigation, a potential problem when many municipal water systems are struggling to keep up with demand. And many urban farms struggle financially; in a 2016 survey of urban farmers in the U.S., only one in three said they made a living from the farm.

Although cities and states have begun to loosen restrictions on urban agriculture, and even to encourage it with financial incentives, it has remained an open question whether growing food in cities is ultimately going to make them greener. Will the amount of food produced be worth the tradeoffs? A recent analysis of urban agriculture’s global potential, published in the journal Earth’s Future, has taken a big step toward an answer—and the news looks good for urban farming.

“Not only could urban agriculture account for several percent of global food production, but there are added co-benefits beyond that, and beyond the social impacts,” said Matei Georgescu, a professor of geographical sciences and urban planning at Arizona State University and a co-author of the study, along with other researchers at Arizona State, Google, China’s Tsinghua University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Hawaii.

(Image: A MODIS Land Cover Type satellite image of the United States, similar to imagery analyzed by the researchers. Different colors indicate different land uses: red is urban; bright green is deciduous broadleaf forest) 

Using Google’s Earth Engine software, as well as population, meteorological, and other datasets, the researchers determined that, if fully implemented in cities around the world, urban agriculture could produce as much as 180 million metric tons of food a year—perhaps 10 percent of the global output of legumes, roots and tubers, and vegetable crops.

Those numbers are big. Researchers hope they encourage other scientists, as well as urban planners and local leaders, to begin to take urban agriculture more seriously as a potential force for sustainability.

The study also looks at “ecosystem services” associated with urban agriculture, including reduction of the urban heat-island effect, avoided stormwater runoff, nitrogen fixation, pest control, and energy savings. Taken together, these additional benefits make urban agriculture worth as much as $160 billion annually around the globe. The concept of ecosystem services has been around for decades, but it is growing in popularity as a way to account, in economic terms, for the benefits that humans gain from healthy ecosystems. Georgescu and his collaborators decided to investigate the potential ecosystem services that could be provided through widespread adoption of urban agriculture, something that had not been attempted before.

The team began with satellite imagery, using pre-existing analyses to determine which pixels in the images were likely to represent vegetation and urban infrastructure. Looking at existing vegetation in cities (it can be difficult to determine, from satellite imagery, what’s a park and what’s a farm), as well as suitable roofs, vacant land, and potential locations for vertical farms, they created a system for analyzing the benefits of so-called “natural capital”—here, that means soil and plants—on a global and country-wide scale.

Beyond the benefits we already enjoy from having street trees and parks in our cities, the researchers estimated that fully-realized urban agriculture could provide as much as 15 billion kilowatt hours of annual energy savings worldwide—equivalent to nearly half the power generated by solar panels in the U.S. It could also sequester up to 170,000 tons of nitrogen and prevent as much as 57 billion cubic meters of stormwater runoff, a major source of pollution in rivers and streams.

“We had no notion of what we would find until we developed the algorithm and the models and made the calculation,” Georgescu said. “And that work had never been done before. This is a benchmark study, and our hope with this work is that others now know what sort of data to look for.”

Robert Costanza, a professor of public policy at Australian National University, cofounded the International Society for Ecological Economics and researches sustainable urbanism and the economic relationship between humans and our environment. He called the study (in which he played no part) “a major advance.”

“This is the first global estimate of the potential for urban agriculture,” Costanza wrote in an email. “Urban agriculture will never feed the world, and this paper confirms that, but the important point is that natural capital in cities can be vastly improved and this would produce a range of benefits, not just food.”

Costanza said he would like to see the researchers’ big data approach become standard in urban planning, as a way to determine the best balance between urban infrastructure and green space—whether it’s farms, forests, parks, or wetlands. That is the researchers’ hope as well, and they’ve released their code to allow other scientists and urban planners to run their own data, especially at the local level.

“Somebody, maybe in Romania, say, could just plug their values in and that will produce local estimates,” Georgescu said. “If they have a grand vision of developing or expanding some city with X amount of available land where urban agriculture can be grown, they can now quantify these added co-benefits.”

That could be very valuable, said Sabina Shaikh, director of the Program on the Global Environment at the University of Chicago, who researches the urban environment and the economics of environmental policy.

“Ecosystem services is something that is very site-specific,” she said. “But this research may help people make comparisons a little bit better, particularly policymakers who want to think through, ‘What’s the benefit of a park vs. food production?’ or some combination of things. It doesn’t necessarily mean, because it has the additional benefit of food production, that a farm is going to be more highly valued than a park. But it gives policymakers another tool, another thing to consider.”

Want to learn more about how urban agriculture can help make cities across the globe more efficient, sustainable and resilient? Then join us at AgLanta 2018: Smart Ag for Smart Cities. This dynamic 2-day conference will explore 7 critical smart city topics, including smart urban development and smart resource management.

#urban agriculture #urban farming #smart agriculture #big data #smart cities #resilience #sustainability #food systems #green infrastructure #urban planning #google

[newstfionline]

This Tiny Country Feeds the World

By Frank Viviano, National Geographic magazine, September 2017 issue

In a potato field near the Netherlands’ border with Belgium, Dutch farmer Jacob van den Borne is seated in the cabin of an immense harvester before an instrument panel worthy of the starship Enterprise.

From his perch 10 feet above the ground, he’s monitoring two drones--a driverless tractor roaming the fields and a quadcopter in the air--that provide detailed readings on soil chemistry, water content, nutrients, and growth, measuring the progress of every plant down to the individual potato. Van den Borne’s production numbers testify to the power of this “precision farming,” as it’s known. The global average yield of potatoes per acre is about nine tons. Van den Borne’s fields reliably produce more than 20.

That copious output is made all the more remarkable by the other side of the balance sheet: inputs. Almost two decades ago, the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture under the rallying cry “Twice as much food using half as many resources.” Since 2000, van den Borne and many of his fellow farmers have reduced dependence on water for key crops by as much as 90 percent. They’ve almost completely eliminated the use of chemical pesticides on plants in greenhouses, and since 2009 Dutch poultry and livestock producers have cut their use of antibiotics by as much as 60 percent.

One more reason to marvel: The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, with more than 1,300 inhabitants per square mile. It’s bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass. How on Earth have the Dutch done it?

Seen from the air, the Netherlands resembles no other major food producer--a fragmented patchwork of intensely cultivated fields, most of them tiny by agribusiness standards, punctuated by bustling cities and suburbs. In the country’s principal farming regions, there’s almost no potato patch, no greenhouse, no hog barn that’s out of sight of skyscrapers, manufacturing plants, or urban sprawl. More than half the nation’s land area is used for agriculture and horticulture.

Banks of what appear to be gargantuan mirrors stretch across the countryside, glinting when the sun shines and glowing with eerie interior light when night falls. They are Holland’s extraordinary greenhouse complexes, some of them covering 175 acres.

These climate-controlled farms enable a country located a scant thousand miles from the Arctic Circle to be a global leader in exports of a fair-weather fruit: the tomato. The Dutch are also the world’s top exporter of potatoes and onions and the second largest exporter of vegetables overall in terms of value. More than a third of all global trade in vegetable seeds originates in the Netherlands.

The brain trust behind these astounding numbers is centered at Wageningen University & Research (WUR), located 50 miles southeast of Amsterdam. Widely regarded as the world’s top agricultural research institution, WUR is the nodal point of Food Valley, an expansive cluster of agricultural technology start-ups and experimental farms. The name is a deliberate allusion to California’s Silicon Valley, with Wageningen emulating the role of Stanford University in its celebrated merger of academia and entrepreneurship.

Ernst van den Ende, managing director of WUR’s Plant Sciences Group, embodies Food Valley’s blended approach. A renowned scholar with the casual manner of a barista at a hip café, van den Ende is a world authority on plant pathology. But, he says, “I’m not simply a college dean. Half of me runs Plant Sciences, but the other half oversees nine separate business units involved in commercial contract research.” Only that mix, “the science-driven in tandem with the market-driven,” he maintains, “can meet the challenge that lies ahead.”

The challenge? Put in bluntly apocalyptic terms, he says, the planet must produce “more food in the next four decades than all farmers in history have harvested over the past 8,000 years.”

That’s because by 2050, the Earth will be home to as many as 10 billion people, up from today’s 7.5 billion. If massive increases in agricultural yield are not achieved, matched by massive decreases in the use of water and fossil fuels, a billion or more people may face starvation. Hunger could be the 21st century’s most urgent problem, and the visionaries working in Food Valley believe they have found innovative solutions. The wherewithal to stave off catastrophic famine is within reach, van den Ende insists. His optimism rests on feedback from more than a thousand WUR projects in more than 140 countries and on its formal pacts with governments and universities on six continents to share advances and implement them.

A conversation with van den Ende is a white-knuckle ride on a torrent of brainstorms, statistics, and predictions. African drought? “Water isn’t the fundamental problem. It’s poor soil,” he says. “The absence of nutrients can be offset by cultivating plants that act in symbiosis with certain bacteria to produce their own fertilizer.” The soaring cost of grain to feed animals? “Feed them grasshoppers instead,” he says. One hectare of land yields one metric ton of soy protein, a common livestock feed, a year. The same amount of land can produce 150 tons of insect protein.

The conversation rushes on to the use of LED lighting to permit 24-hour cultivation in precisely climate-controlled greenhouses. It then detours to a misconception that sustainable agriculture means minimal human intervention in nature.

“Look at the island of Bali!” he exclaims. For at least a thousand years, its farmers have raised ducks and fish within the same flooded paddies where rice is cultivated. It’s an entirely self-contained food system, irrigated by intricate canal systems along mountain terraces sculpted by human hands.

“There’s your model of sustainability,” van den Ende says.

At every turn in the Netherlands, the future of sustainable agriculture is taking shape--not in the boardrooms of big corporations but on thousands of modest family farms. You see it vividly in the terrestrial paradise of Ted Duijvestijn and his brothers Peter, Ronald, and Remco. Like the Balinese, the Duijvestijns have constructed a self-contained food system in which a near-perfect balance prevails between human ingenuity and nature’s potential.

At the Duijvestijns’ 36-acre greenhouse complex near the old city of Delft, visitors stroll among ranks of deep green tomato vines, 20 feet tall. Rooted not in soil but in fibers spun from basalt and chalk, the plants are heavy with tomatoes--15 varieties in all--to suit the taste of the most demanding palate. In 2015 an international jury of horticultural experts named the Duijvestijns the world’s most innovative tomato growers.

Since relocating and restructuring their 70-year-old farm in 2004, the Duijvestijns have declared resource independence on every front. The farm produces almost all of its own energy and fertilizer and even some of the packaging materials necessary for the crop’s distribution and sale. The growing environment is kept at optimal temperatures year-round by heat generated from geothermal aquifers that simmer under at least half of the Netherlands.

The only irrigation source is rainwater, says Ted, who manages the cultivation program. Each kilogram of tomatoes from his fiber-rooted plants requires less than four gallons of water, compared with 16 gallons for plants in open fields. Once each year the entire crop is regrown from seeds, and the old vines are processed to make packaging crates. The few pests that manage to enter the Duijvestijn greenhouses are greeted by a ravenous army of defenders such as the fierce Phytoseiulus persimilis, a predatory mite that shows no interest in tomatoes but gorges itself on hundreds of destructive spider mites.

A few days before I visited the Duijvestijns’ operation, Ted had attended a meeting of farmers and researchers at Wageningen. “This is how we come up with innovative ways to move ahead, to keep improving,” he told me. “People from all over Holland get together to discuss different perspectives and common goals. No one knows all the answers on their own.”

The search for answers to a life-or-death question gave rise to one of the Netherlands’ most innovative companies. Half a century ago, Jan Koppert was growing cucumbers on his land and using toxic chemical sprays to fend off pests. When a physician declared him allergic to pesticides, Koppert set out to learn all he could about the natural enemies of insects and arachnids.

Today Koppert Biological Systems is the global pacesetter in biological pest and disease control, with 1,330 employees and 26 international subsidiaries marketing its products in 96 countries. Koppert’s firm can provide you with cotton bags of ladybug larvae that mature into voracious consumers of aphids. Or how about a bottle containing 2,000 of those predatory mites that hunt down spider mites on plants and suck them dry? Or a box of 500 million nematodes that mount deadly assaults on fly larvae that prey on commercial mushrooms?

Koppert’s legions make love as well as war, in the guise of enthusiastic bumblebees. No form of artificial pollination matches the efficiency of bees buzzing from flower to flower, gathering nectar to nourish their queen and helping to fertilize the ovaries of plants along the way. Each Koppert hive accounts for daily visits to half a million flowers. Farmers using the bees typically report 20 to 30 percent increases in yields and fruit weight, for less than half the cost of artificial pollination.

Nowhere is the Netherlands’ agricultural technology more cutting-edge than in the embryonic organism in which most food is literally rooted: seeds. And nowhere are the controversies that surround the future of agriculture more heated. Chief among them is the development of genetically modified organisms to produce larger and more pest-resistant crops. To their critics, GMOs conjure up a Frankenstein scenario, fraught with uncertainty about the consequences of radical experimentation with living entities.

Dutch firms are among the world leaders in the seed business, with close to $1.7 billion worth of exports in 2016. Yet they market no GMO products. A new seed variety in Europe’s heavily regulated GMO arena can cost a hundred million dollars and require 12 to 14 years of research and development, according to KeyGene’s Arjen van Tunen. By contrast, the latest achievements in the venerable science of molecular breeding--which introduces no foreign genes--can deliver remarkable gains in five to 10 years, with development costs as low as $100,000 and seldom more than a million dollars. It is a direct descendant of methods employed by farmers in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago.

The sales catalog of Rijk Zwaan, another Dutch breeder, offers high-yield seeds in more than 25 broad groups of vegetables, many that defend themselves naturally against major pests. Heleen Bos is responsible for the company’s organic accounts and international development projects. She might be expected to dwell on the fact that a single high-tech Rijk Zwaan greenhouse tomato seed, priced below $0.50, has been known to produce a mind-boggling 150 pounds of tomatoes. Instead she talks about the hundreds of millions of people, most of them women and children, who lack sufficient food.

Like many of the entrepreneurs at Food Valley firms, Bos has worked in the fields and cities of the world’s poorest nations. With lengthy postings to Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Bangladesh over the past 30 years, she knows that hunger and devastating famine are not abstract threats.

“Of course, we can’t immediately implement the kind of ultrahigh-tech agriculture over there that you see in the Netherlands,” she says. “But we are well into introducing medium-tech solutions that can make a huge difference.” She cites the proliferation of relatively inexpensive plastic greenhouses that have tripled some crop yields compared with those of open fields, where crops are more subject to pests and drought.

Since 2008 Rijk Zwaan has supported a breeding program in Tanzania at a 50-acre trial field in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro. Its seeds are sent to Holland for quality control tests on germination rates, purity, and resistance to pests and diseases. Collaborative projects are under way in Kenya, Peru, and Guatemala. “We try to develop seeds for their specific conditions,” Bos says. But the starting point, she adds emphatically, cannot be the sort of top-down approach that has doomed many well-meaning foreign aid projects.

“We have constant, tremendously important conversations with the small growers themselves--on their needs, on the weather and soil conditions they face, on costs,” she says.

For some Dutch researchers, concern for people threatened by hunger stems in part from a national trauma: The Netherlands was the last Western country to suffer a serious famine, when 10,000 to 20,000 people died in German-occupied lands during the final year of World War II. Decades later, WUR’s Rudy Rabbinge, professor emeritus of sustainable development and food security, took up the cause when he helped devise extensive changes in the faculty, student body, and curriculum that transformed the institution into what he calls “a university for the world, and not simply for the Dutch.” Today a hefty share of the academic and research activities at WUR are focused on problems facing poor nations.

#Netherlands #Dutch agriculture #Dutch farms #Wageningen University & Research #sustainable farming

[skdigitalcitizenship]

THE DIVIDED BILLIONS: How The World Is Becoming More Separated.

Since the creation of the WWW (World Wide Web), the publicly accessible internet as we know it today created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 the world has come on leaps and bounds in both societal advances and technological triumphs. But what most don’t know is those who are left behind!

The term widely known as the digital divide, refers to the separation in both realistic ability and, together with access, and literacy with regards to the internet. It is a clear fact that certain countries have an advantageous position to provide their citizens with access to the WWW.

Let me explain with a brief history for example, Berners-Lee was a British scientist and so his early creation of the “WWW” consisted of English based language. Hence why parts of Northern America very quickly adopted the technology and why it has led them to become one of the most internet reliant continents in the world. The USA (United States of America) being the main contributor to this lifestyle. Many of their countries basic building blocks of society are run using the internet and the WWW. For example, homes are powered, heated and provided with water, through not just pipes and wires; but through communication between employees, customers, managers and executives.

Many parts of the world who don’t have a large or fluent population of English speaking citizens, tend to show a trend of failure to adopt the web to the extent that others have in the 21st century. This could also be due to the political climate since the ending of the Second World War and the Cold War. Countries lesser involved with global politics, trading or combat appear to be left very much in the dust in terms of digital status in the world.

An interesting anomaly to this theory of course is displayed in the rate at which South-Eastern (SE) Asian countries are excelling in both digital usage, literacy and efficiency. The web and the connections that come with it are becoming more prominent in certain countries in those regions every day. An example of this would be how in a 2010 report made by Akamai, the world's largest CDN (Content Delivery Network, systems of servers that deliver web content to specific users) provider; showed how there was a 16.22 Mbit/s average difference between South Korea’s super-fast internet speeds and Iran’s bottom line technology.

Iran of course has been shrouded from the world/technology in the last decade, preoccupied with fighting and violence that has made setting up a decent living environment for its civilians a secondary priority. Interestingly all three top spots on this report are taken by SE Asian countries who are renowned for their dramatic increase in use for the new age technologies. So, what advantages come to those countries who have such a dramatic presence in the online world in today's age?

In a blog post by Google’s vice president for South East Asia & India and the Joint Head Investment Group at Temasek (a multinational investment organisation), they explained how the South East has rapidly increased its e-commerce value far greater than projected.

Additionally, in a study in February of 2017, by “WeAreSocial” they conclude that in the last 12 months, the web user base in SE Asia grew by 80 million people, that's more than a 30% increase in around a year.

They extended this point by saying that the rise is likely driven by an increase in mobile internet users, as handheld hardware technology increases in quality; customers are warming to the idea of connectivity and are seeing more benefits of living an online and interconnected lifestyle.

A really important part of online culture in many of the countries in SE Asia is online gaming. In South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong esports is a rising environment for both children and young adults. This adoption of the web shows how whole new platforms, businesses and parts of society can come into fruition under the right circumstances.

In other parts of the world, countries who have yet to begin making leaps and bounds into the world of modern online tech have clearly fallen behind in aspects such as these. In an article from “Motherboard” they interviewed a young esports star called “All Youssef Mohsen” who addressed the fact that despite his team's success in their region of India, the lack of game servers set up to accommodate their competitions with teams from other countries had effectively barred them from the global scene. This means that it wasn’t his team's failure to produce results that resulted in their stumped ambitions, but instead the inability of his country to provide quality network facilities.

This issue raises the point that “true” access to the internet is never a simple yes/no answer. Access to the internet should not be judged by the content that is available. For example, if users back in 2000 were trying to access the web there would be reasonable loading times, because there was less content and images being displayed online. If you tried to access say, “YouTube” today with the same speed connection the difference in loading time would be very obvious. Essentially, it is an imperative and crucial aspect of remaining within the “digital societal loop” that the quality of digital related facilities are invested into and kept up to date with the rapidly changing and advancing climate of today's world.

This being said, what are the disadvantages to not being within the “digital societal loop”?

Looking at countries that are members of the “lower half” of the digital divide, you can see political, social and geographical trends that may explain why these countries are less developed in terms of digital practices. An interactive map produced by “Fast metrics” displays countries average internet speeds. Green being high and red being low. Countries with lower speeds and presumably less advanced digital facilitation are often seen clumped together such as in the South Americas, Africa an Eastern Asia.

There are a few small number of anomalies to the geographical trend such as Greenland who is close of the coast of Canada (a North-American country with good internet access) and yet has dramatically different results. This is likely due to their very small land mass to population ratio. The population density in Greenland is 0.137 people per square meter as of 2016 according to “Index Mundi” resulting in a low input of infrastructure due to lack of population. To run cables and create a viable network across such a large portion of land to such a small potential customer base is not financially viable for many companies. Other anomalies on the other side of the planet include South Korea and Japan; two internet savvy countries surrounded by many other nations that appear much less advance in terms of technological infrastructure.. These nations fall under the small collection of countries that have thrived by themselves in providing its people with an unmatched source of access to technology.

Hector Ruiz, the former President of Motorola’s semiconductor products sector, and former president and CEO for AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) stated that “Technology is only as powerful as it is accessible. Broader access brings education, information, and a sense of community that can help combat AIDS, malnutrition, ignorance and neglect. The power of a connected and enlightened world community is just beginning” this describes how many countries who have a more organised system in place for internet use, communication, and advanced industries are often those who not only do help, but should aim to help those who don’t and who are suffering. This today is aided by having the fastest system the world has ever seen to send and receive money through online transactions.

As children are born into this era of new methods and ways of learning it is entirely possible for people from all walks of life to have access to an education, even if it different to that of the normal teaching process. With easy access to education comes more educated people. Democratic voting turnouts are suspected to increase as a result of individuals becoming more understanding of the world and politics. The perception of money from physical to digital has it’s issues but the education of finance can help form more stable economies and teach people who can eventually give back through ideas and breakthrough learning that can help the world directly. It has been shown through global trends and statistics that after countries invest time, money and resources into providing its citizens with digital facilities, that more advanced and efficient forms of education (such as online tutoring)  will rise in popularity and accessibility. With this comes the chance to educate children with areas such as English speaking which as mentioned, helps increase the chance that individuals can communicate with a much broader range of people, especially in the online world where 55.7% of the internet's content is published in English (from a study by unbabel.com).

In conclusion, the difference between first and third world countries across the globe has always been large, however with the rapid incline of digital access being provided to certain countries compared to the stagnant nature of it in others the gap between countries economies, infrastructures, industries, and societies is growing day by day. And who knows when or if it will stop?#

References

Anandan, R. and Sipahimalani, R. (2019). Southeast Asia’s accelerating internet economy. [online] Google. Available at: https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-asia/economysea-2018/ [Accessed 21 Jan. 2019].

Fastmetrics.com. (2019). Internet Speeds by Country - Fastest Internet In The World Map. [online] Available at: https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-country.php [Accessed 21 Jan. 2019].

Indexmundi.com. (2019). Greenland - Population density (people per sq. km of land area). [online] Available at: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/greenland/indicator/EN.POP.DNST [Accessed 21 Jan. 2019].

Kemp, S. (2019). Digital in Southeast Asia in 2017 - We Are Social. [online] We Are Social. Available at: https://wearesocial.com/special-reports/digital-southeast-asia-2017 [Accessed 21 Jan. 2019].

Kleinman, J. (2019). African Esports Are Ready to Explode, but Video Game Publishers Are Holding Them Back. [online] Motherboard.vice.com. Available at: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/5994g8/african-esports-are-ready-to-explode-but-video-game-publishers-are-holding-them-back [Accessed 21 Jan. 2019].

Pingdom Royal. (2019). The REAL connection speeds for Internet users across the world (charts) - Pingdom Royal. [online] Available at: https://royal.pingdom.com/2010/11/12/real-connection-speeds-for-internet-users-across-the-world/ [Accessed 21 Jan. 2019].

Unbabel. (2019). Top Languages of the Internet, Today and Tomorrow. [online] Available at: https://unbabel.com/blog/top-languages-of-the-internet/ [Accessed 21 Jan. 2019].

[ayittey1]

The Keys to Botswana’s Economic Success

Botswana: The Shining Black Economic Star

 Ensconced in the Kgalagadi (Kalahari) basin, Botswana possessed all the ingredients for another postcolonial black African economic disaster. Doomsayers gave the country less than five years to self-destruct and evaporate.       When it gained its independence from Britain in September 1966, Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland) was one of the twenty poorest countries in the world with per capita income of only $40. Mines, commercial and farming enterprises were mostly owned by South Africa. There were only five kilometers of tarred road. Its society was composed of nine ethnic groups.

 In addition, about 75 percent of the country's 592,000 sq. km. was desert, bordered by largely infertile areas. The bulk of its largely illiterate population (about 80 percent) lived on only 20 percent of the land area. There was a late-blooming diamond industry and a poor cattle industry, but the country lacked the technical know-how to develop other natural resources. Constantly threatened by drought, which in 1985 caused a serious loss of 1,500 jobs, and dependent on neighboring countries, which kept it held hostage to extraterritorial occurrences, Botswana additionally had to deal with foreign wars and the subsequent refugees.

 After the ignominious 1976 Sharpeville massacre, thousands of students fled South Africa to seek refuge in Botswana. Soon afterward, a new wave of refugees from Rhodesia swelled the numbers encamped in Botswana from 3,000 to 21,000 by mid-1979, placing severe strains on budgetary resources and social facilities. Furthermore, Botswana was violently attacked throughout the eighties by both Zimbabwe and South Africa, who accused it of harboring guerillas among the refugees.

 At independence, Botswana's prospects of surviving as a viable politico-economic entity were just about equal to those of Mali or Burkina Faso (former Upper Volta). Cameroon, Nigeria, and Zaire were far more blessed with richer mineral wealth endowment, luxuriant vegetation, modestly developed infrastructure, and an economically active population. Even Ghana was in a better "take-off" position. Yet, in spite of all its handicaps, Botswana has managed to register an impressive rate of economic advance, astonishing by any standard.

 In a little less than two decades (1966 to 1986), Botswana's rate of economic growth averaged an astounding 8 percent per annum while the South African economy was limping along at a miserable 1.5 percent per annum between 1965 and 1985. In 1988, for example, Botswana's minister of finance and development planning, Vice-President Peter Mmusi, indicated that average real growth rate was running at 14 percent annually and that per capita GDP was 2,800 pulas ($1,450) C ten times greater than it was in 1978 (African Business, Sept 1988; p.35). Back in 1983, real GPD growth rate was a dizzying 26.3 percent and GDP per capita exploded from 755 pulas in 1982 to 2145 pulas in 1986. By 1991, GDP per capita had reached 5,950 pulas ($2439). Its GNP per capita of $2530 in 1991 was the third highest in Africa, after oil-rich sparsely-populated Gabon ($3780) and South Africa ($2560) (African Business, Sept 1993; p.14). Botswana's foreign debt was $543 million in 1992 and its reserves stood at $3.4 billion, which, on a per capita basis, were the highest in the world. Its debt service ratio in 1992 was an insignificant 3.4 percent, compared with the 53 percent of most African countries.

 The first diamond mine to open was Orapa in 1971. By 1988, diamond production had reached 15.2 million carats, earning about 85 percent of Botswana's export earnings of 2205 million pulas ($1,095 million). The beef industry, too, underwent phenomenal expansion, despite the denigration of African cattle and the devastating droughts of 1965/66 and 1982-84 that killed off a third of the national herd. Botswana began to export meat to the European Economic  Community (EEC), which pays almost four times the world price for this meat because of its quality. The Bostwana Meat Commission's meat processing plant at Lobatse is the second largest in the world. There are other slaughterhouses in Maun and Francistown to help Botswana meet its 19,000 metric ton EEC quota.

 Botswana's economic performance has not been matched anywhere on the African continent in the postcolonial period. Apart from Botswana, exceptions to the general economic atrophy has been pitifully few. Recall the difficulty the World Bank and Western governments have had in finding “economic success stories” in Africa as durable as Botswana’s. Across black Africa, Botswana remains a shining star. Obviously, if Botswana can succeed economically, the rest of the African countries can, too. But how? And what were the secrets to Botswana's success?

 The Keys to Botswana's Success

 Although various analysts have attributed Botswana's success to its mineral wealth in diamonds, a combination of factors have contributed immensely to create the environment vital for economic prosperity. Foremost has been the absence of civil and political strife. Botswana society is multiracial, composed of ethnic Batswana, Europeans and Asians. These various groups live peacefully together. Blatant acts of discrimination or ethnic chauvinism are not common in Botswana. By contrast, violent ethnic clashes, senseless and endless civil wars, and civil strife rage in at least fifteen other African countries (Angola, Burundi, Chad, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe).

 Second, Botswana enjoys political stability. This stability was not engineered by a military dictator or by declaring the country to be a one-party state. Botswana is a parliamentary democracy based upon a multiparty system. The main political parties are the ruling Botswana Democratic Party, the Botswana National Front, and the Botswana People's Party. Multiparty democracy, contrary to the claims by Presidents Moi of Kenya, Kaunda of Zambia and other African dictators, did not degenerate into "tribal politics" in Botswana.

 Third, the Botswana government has pursued strikingly prudent economic policies, allowing pragmatism, rather than emotional rhetoric, to prevail. The Botswana government's commitment to mixed economy has not been directed toward nationalization C no such takeovers have occurred C but rather toward the provision of good infrastructural support. Revenues from minerals, customs union payments, and donor funds were devoted largely to investment in infrastructure and to providing greater public access to basic needs: water, health care, and primary education. In Botswana, parastatals were only established to plug the gaps or overcome the deficiencies in the private sector, rather than to compete with or seek to replace the private sector, as was the case in many African countries, especially Tanzania, which took a "socialist" bent.

 Fortunate enough to have an ex-minister of finance as president (Masire), the government pursued judicious macroeconomic policies of saving windfalls and avoiding excessive government spending during export boom years. These savings provided the cushion to ride out the lean years. By contrast, when sharply rising oil prices boosted exports from $4 billion in 1975 to $26 billion in 1980, Nigeria went on an import binge. It splurged on prestigious projects, including a $25 billion new capital at Abuja, while vampire politicians transferred as much as $15 million a day illegally out of the country. Nigeria even neglected agriculture, preferring to import food using cheap oil dollars. Rising public expenditures fueled by oil revenues shifted production from agriculture to services. When the price of oil collapsed, so did Nigeria's export receipts. By 1986, they were down to $6 billion, while external debt rose from $5 billion in 1980 to $25 billion in 1986. The booms in coffee, cocoa, and copper prices in the 1970s elicited similar extravagant spending by governments in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Uganda, and Zaire. Other Third World countries such Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, acted similarly, squandering windfall profits from export booms only to find themselves in a debt crisis when markets collapsed.

 Fourth, largely due to its openness and a vibrant press, there is a refreshing absence of corruption C the bane of many African regimes. Botswana has a lively free press and freedom of expression. Apart from the government newspaper, The Daily News, and the government monthly magazine, Kutlwano, the country has three weekly private newspapers and four locally produced monthly magazines. The local publications are not subject to censorship. In addition, foreign papers and magazines are widely available.

 Commenting on the political process in Botswana, Professor Patrick Mulotsi, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Botswana, was quite pithy: “If you look at the prerequisites of liberal democracy, the rule of law has been highly respected. A lot of people can say a lot of things with relatively little fear. There has been a lot of response by the ruling party to debates with the opposition” (The New York Times, May 16, 1990; p.A6).

 Botswana can find solutions to its economic problems because it permits free debate and freedom of expression. By contrast, the rest of black Africa is mired in an economic quagmire, for want of ideas and solutions to extricate itself. Intellectual repression prevents those with ideas from coming forward. Besides Botswana, only seven other African counties (Benin, Botswana, Cape Verde Islands, Ghana, Mali, Mauritius, Sao Tome & Principe and South Africa) of the remaining 54 countries tolerate freedom of expression and criticism of foolish government policies. And many of these same countries have ratified the Organization of African Unity's Charter of Human and Peoples' Rights, Article 9 of which guarantees freedom of expression.

 Fifth, Botswana did not ignore its indigenous roots. It built upon its native system of kgotlas, whereby chiefs and councilors meet "under a tree" to reach a consensus on important matters. In fact, cabinet ministers are required to attend weekly kgotla meetings. As Fred Dira, an African journalist, explained:

When they were initiated, kgotla meetings were meant to be totally apolitical.  They were to be meetings at which government ministers and members of parliament would brief local communities about official policies and programs, or about issues discussed or to be discussed in parliament. It was also part of the tradition of kgotla meetings that if they were convened by the president or any of his ministers, the respective members of parliament would not only be present, but would also be given some role to play at the meeting. This was in recognition of the fact that at such meetings, MPs shared the role of host with the chiefs (Mmegi/The Reporter, May 12-18, 1995; p.7).

 Such was the case in 1991, when the government tried to explain a $25 million Okavango River irrigation project to the villagers at a kgotlas in the northern town of Maun. Irate villagers let loose their opposition: "You will dry the delta! We will have no more fish to eat! No more reeds to build our houses!" a village elder screamed” (The Washington Post, Mar 21, 1991; p.A3). For six hours, they excoriated government officials for conceiving of such a dastardly project. Buckling under the wrath of the people, the government canceled the project. Only in Botswana could this happen, giving true meaning to such terms as "participatory development@, "bottom-up development approach@, "grassroots development@, and "popular participation in development@.

 Furthermore, in Botswana, "Chiefs still exercise considerable local authority and influence which can act as a check on too precipitate action by the government and can even swing local elections" (Colclough and McCarthy, 1980; p.38). Asked why Botswana has had better leaders than the rest of Africa, Zibani Maundeni of the University of Botswana replied indigenous Tswana culture has helped: “Before any big decision [Tswana leaders] consulted the general population. There was a strong culture of hearing the views of ordinary people” (The Economist, Nov 6, 2004; p.50). In the rest of black Africa, chiefs saw their powers and authority reduced: The indigenous system of participatory democracy and the tradition of reaching a consensus were spurned, and, in their place, African elites and intellectuals erected one-man dictatorships and de facto apartheid regimes.

 Of course, Botswana has had problems with income distribution and AIDS. But its economic success demonstrates that Africa does not have to renounce its indigenous culture to advance economically. The Japanese did not. "Japan's postwar success has demonstrated that modernization does not mean Westernization. Japan has modernized spectacularly, yet remains utterly different from the West. Economic success in Japan has nothing to do with individualism. It is the fruit of sheer discipline C the ability to work in groups and to conform" (Editorial in the Bangkok Post qtd. in The Washington Times, Nov 9, 1996; p.A8).

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[gordonwilliamsweb]

Kidney Experts Say It’s Time to Remove Race From Medical Algorithms. Doing So Is Complicated.

Alphonso Harried recently came across a newspaper clipping about his grandfather receiving his 1,000th dialysis treatment. His grandfather later died — at a dialysis center — as did his uncle, both from kidney disease.

“And that comes in my mind, on my weak days: ‘Are you going to pass away just like they did?’” said Harried, 46, who also has the disease.

He doesn’t like to dwell on that. He has gigs to play as a musician, a ministry to run with his wife and kids to protect as a school security guard.

Yet he must juggle all that around three trips each week to a dialysis center in Alton, Illinois, about 20 miles from his home in St. Louis, to clean his blood of the impurities his kidneys can no longer flush out. He’s waiting for a transplant, just as his uncle did before him.

“It’s just frustrating,” Harried said. “I’m stuck in the same pattern.”

Thousands of other Americans with failing kidneys are also stuck, going to dialysis as they await new kidneys that may never come. That’s especially true of Black patients, like Harried, who are about four times as likely to have kidney failure as white Americans, and who make up more than 35% of people on dialysis but just 13% of the U.S. population. They’re also less likely to get on the waitlist for a kidney transplant, and less likely to receive a transplant once on the list.

An algorithm doctors use may help perpetuate such disparities. It uses race as a factor in evaluating all stages of kidney disease care: diagnosis, dialysis and transplantation.

It’s a simple metric that uses a blood test, plus the patient’s age and sex and whether they’re Black. It makes Black patients appear to have healthier kidneys than non-Black patients, even when their blood measurements are identical.

“It is as close to stereotyping a particular group of people as it can be,” said Dr. Rajnish Mehrotra, a nephrologist with the University of Washington School of Medicine.

This race coefficient has recently come under fire for being imprecise, leading to potentially worse outcomes for Black patients and less chance of receiving a new kidney. A national task force of kidney experts and patients is studying how to replace it. Some institutions have already stopped using it.

But how best to assess a patient’s kidney function remains uncertain, and some medical experts say fixing this equation is only one step in creating more equitable care, a process complicated by factors far deeper than a math problem.

“There are so many inequities in kidney disease that stem from broader structural racism,” said Dr. Deidra Crews, a nephrologist and the associate director for research development at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity. “It is just a sliver of what the broader set of issues are when it comes to both disparities and inequities in who gets kidney disease in the first place, and then in the care processes.”

Why Race Has Been Part of the Equation

Kidneys filter about 40 gallons of blood a day, like a Brita filter for the body. They keep in the good stuff and send out the bad through urine. But unlike other organs, kidneys don’t easily repair themselves.

“There’s a point of no return,” said Dr. Cynthia Delgado, a University of California-San Francisco nephrologist who is leading the task force working on the national recommendation to ditch the racial part of the equation.

Furthermore, it’s hard to gauge whether kidneys are working properly. Gold-standard tests involve a chemical infusion and hours of collecting blood and urine to see how quickly the kidneys flush the chemical out. An algorithm is much more efficient.

Buoyed by activism around structural racism, those seeking equity in health care have recently been calling out the algorithm as an example of the racism baked into American medicine. Researchers writing in the New England Journal of Medicine last year included kidney equations in a laundry list of race-adjusted algorithms used to evaluate parts of the body — from heart and lungs to bones and breasts. Such equations, they wrote, can “perpetuate or even amplify race-based health inequities.”

In March, ahead of the national task force’s upcoming formal recommendation, leaders in kidney care said race modifiers should be removed. And Fresenius Medical Care, one of the two largest U.S. dialysis companies, said the race component is “problematic.”

Until the late 1990s, doctors primarily used the Cockcroft-Gault equation. It didn’t ask for race, but used age, weight and the blood level of creatinine — a chemical that’s basically the trash left after muscles move. A high level of creatinine in the blood signals that kidneys are not doing their job of disposing of it. But the equation was based on a study of just 249 white men.

Then, researchers wrapping up a study on how to slow down kidney disease realized they were sitting on a mother lode of data that could rewrite that equation: gold-standard kidney function measurements from about 1,600 patients, 12% of whom were Black. They evaluated 16 variables, including age, sex, diabetes diagnosis and blood pressure.

They landed on something that accurately predicted the kidney function of patients better than the old equation. Except it made the kidneys of Black participants appear to be sicker than the gold-standard test showed they were.

The authors reasoned it might be caused by muscle mass. Participants with more muscle mass would likely have more creatinine in their blood, not because their kidneys were failing to remove it, but because they just had more muscles producing more waste. So they “corrected” Black patients’ results for that difference.

Dr. Andrew S. Levey, a professor at Tufts University School of Medicine who led the study, said it doesn’t make intuitive sense to include race — now widely considered a social construct — in an equation about biology.

Still, in 1999, he and others published the race equation, then updated it a decade later. Though other equations exist that don’t involve race, Levey’s latest version, often referred to as the “CKD-EPI” equation, is recommended for clinical use. It shows a Black patient’s kidneys functioning 16% better than those of a non-Black patient with the same blood work.

Removing the Race Number

Many patients don’t know about this equation and how their race has factored into their care.

“I really wish someone would have mentioned it,” Harried said.

He said it burned him up “knowing that this one little test that I didn’t know anything about could keep me from — or prolong me — getting a kidney.”

Glenda V. Roberts curbed her kidney disease with a vegan diet and by conducting meetings as an IT executive while walking. But after more than 40 years of slow decline, her kidney function finally reached the cutoff required to get on the transplant waitlist. When it did, the decline was swift — a pattern researchers have noted in Black patients. “It really makes you wonder what the benefit is of having an equation that will cause people who look like me — Black people — to get referrals later, to have to wait longer before you can get on the transplant list, but then have your disease progress more rapidly,” she said.

Roberts, who is now the director of external relations at the University of Washington’s Kidney Research Institute in Seattle and on the national task force, said a genetic test added to her feeling that a “Black/non-Black” option in an equation was a charade.

“In fact, I am not predominantly of African ancestry. I’m 25% Native American. I’m Swedish and English and French,” said Roberts. “But I am also 48% from countries that are on the continent of Africa.”

The Black/non-Black question also doesn’t make sense to Delgado, the University of California nephrologist. “I would probably for some people qualify as being non-Black,” said Delgado, who is Puerto Rican. “But for others, I would qualify as Black.”

So, theoretically, if Delgado were to visit two doctors on the same day, and they guessed her race instead of asking, she could come away with two different readings of how well her kidneys are working.

Researchers found that the race factor doesn’t work for Black Europeans or patients in West Africa. Australian researchers found using the race coefficient led them to overestimate the kidney function of Indigenous Australians.

But in the U.S., Levey and other researchers seeking to replace the race option with physical measurements, such as height and weight, hit a dead end.

To Crews, the Johns Hopkins nephrologist who is also on the national taskforce, the focus on one equation is myopic. The algorithm suggests that something about Black people’s bodies affects their kidneys. Crews thinks that’s the wrong approach to addressing disparities: The issue is not what’s unique about the inner workings of Black bodies, but instead what’s going on around them.

“I really wish we could measure that instead of using race as a variable in the estimating equations,” she said on the “Freely Filtered” podcast. “I don’t think it’s ancestry. I don’t think it’s muscle mass.”

It might not be that Black bodies are more likely to have more creatinine in the blood, but that Americans who experience housing insecurity and barriers to healthy food, quality medical care and timely referrals are more likely to have creatinine in their blood — and that many of them happen to be Black.

Systemic health disparities help explain why Black patients have unusually high rates of kidney failure, since communities of color have less access to regular primary care. One of the most serious consequences of poorly controlled diabetes and hypertension is failure of the organ.

Direct discrimination — intentional or not — from providers may also affect outcomes, said Roberts. She recalled a social worker categorizing her as unable to afford the post-transplant drugs required to keep a transplanted organ healthy, which could have delayed her getting a new organ. Roberts has held executive roles at several multimillion-dollar companies.

Delgado and Levey agree that removing race from the formula might feel better on the surface, but it isn’t clear the move would actually help people.

Studies recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology noted that removing the race factor could lead to some Black patients being disqualified from using beneficial medications because their kidneys might appear unable to handle them. It could also disqualify some Black people from donating a kidney.

“Fiddling with the algorithms is an imperfect way to achieve equity,” Levey said.

As researchers debate the math problem and broader societal ones, patients such as Harried, the St. Louis minister and security guard, are still stuck navigating dialysis.

“One of things that keeps me going is knowing that soon they may call me for a kidney,” Harried said.

He doesn’t know how long his name will be on the transplant waitlist — or whether the race coefficient has prolonged the wait — but he keeps a hospital bag under his bed to be ready.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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[coinretreat]

London Blockchain Week Spreads Into Day Two Despite Coronavirus Scare

The second day of Fintech Worldwide’s Blockchain Summit kicked off to unusually glorious sunshine. But you’d be hard pressed to notice that in the venue because there was no natural light filtering through to the handful of attendees that braved the ongoing coronavirus scare.

Despite COVID-19’s spectre looming large over the conference, panelists spoke about an impressive range of topics, including how Blockchain can help local women in the Maasai Mara, to the day’s debate on the state of adoption.

As MakerDAO’s Gustav Arentoft told me during the conference, speakers in London often come from a more institutional perspective that naturally tilts toward a critical perspective of the industry. While yesterday witnessed panelists clashing over decentralization, volatility, and more, today was mainly about cutting through the fluff that surrounds so many projects in the industry and thinking pragmatically about how to move forward.

Compelling use cases in Africa

Any international Blockchain or crypto project worth its salt is turning its attention to Africa; a continent abundant with use cases for Blockchain. Africa’s huge market and the fact that many millions of people on the continent are considered “unbanked,” seems to indicate that Blockchain is a good fit for many of the complex challenges faced in the region.

Technology entrepreneur John Kamara said that, in Africa, women are one of the most important economic driving factors for growth. Kamara explained that groups formed by local women currently represent a multi-million dollar informal lending economy:

“One of the most important economic driving factors is women. Savings groups. Saving informally among themselves, to borrow themselves so they can survive in the markets. We’re talking about millions of women. All of these women have 4g phones. I was in the Masaai Mara and I could use my whatsapp. They can borrow money at a reduced interest rate among themselves. There are millions of dollars circulated in these groups, they just don’t know it because they are siloed.”

But an emerging use of technology is not contained to the women of the Maasai Mara alone. Kamara gave a fascinating insight into the growth of Opay, a Nigerian startup that received around $120 million in Series B funding from Chinese investors last year. According to Kamara, Opay has revolutionised the motorcycle ride hailing sector in Nigeria:

“Opay went to these guys and said “we’ll take every motorcycle and we’ll pay you 5 percent if you get the consumer to pay with Opay.” That’s probably like 30 cents, but, to the drivers, that’s a shitload of money. Now they’re saying “you need to pay Opay”, it’s the only currency I’m taking. The drivers will help you download the app and pay you to use it. They’ve built an economy using over 4 million people.”

Getting blockchain done: Governments & blockchain

For many people, whether passive observers or innovators working at the coalface of Blockchain development, there is too much talk going on and not enough action. The reasons for this are many. Technologies like Blockchain suffer both from being quite hard to explain to anyone not involved in tech. It can also be difficult to gauge how long it will take for Blockchain projects to turn a profit.

For Laura Bailey, governments and companies alike need to get stuck in with trialling real-life solutions using Blockchain. As Chair and Founder at Qadre, Laura worked on the first ever Blockchain pilot to be used by a government (Isle of Man):

“There’s talking about Blockchain and talking about Blockchain innovation, and then there’s actually investing, doing, trying and getting things wrong. You need to look beyond the initial KPIs and metrics of what we’re trying to achieve, then smash it out of the water and prove them wrong.”

Lavan Tharasarathakumar, vice president of blockchain services at Chainyard, told the audience that government services are outdated are crying out for effective tech solutions:

“Current government services are not fit for purpose. Blockchain is an enabler to provide better services for citizens. If we look at welfare, the hoops people need to jump through to get their payments, it leads to people being underpaid or for the system to be gamed. If we implement Blockchain, we can give one easy and efficient distribution of welfare.”

Mass Adoption

The ambitious goal at the heart of cryptocurrency is that it will one day replace traditional methods of conducting finance. But panelists discussing prospects for mass adoption were split over how this would happen and even questioned whether mass adoption would ever occur.

Sometimes, philosophical arguments about the fundamental nature of cryptocurrency and Blockchain can hold back promising projects from gaining traction. A cursory glance at any kind of crypto media shows that division runs rife between fans of particular tokens and those that identify with certain ideological camps.

One panelist, “Customer Devoted” founder James Sandberg, took a different approach. He stated that the vast majority of people simply don’t care about the philosophical intricacies behind most emerging technology. Over the question of Libra and where CBDCs would first emerge, Sandberg said that adoption will be driven by consumers, not idealogues:

“As a customer, I want it to be good, to be safe, and to do the job well. I don’t care if it’s going though China, Turkey, Europe, or the UK. If the question is currency, the only question that drives me is “Does it get the job done?” On that basis, central banks will try to do a bit of a land grab, but it is driven by customers and that will drive adoption.”

Barry James, founding chair at the BBFTA, was a lively moderator, playing the panelists’ views against one another and posing provocative questions. One such question put to the panel was whether CBDCs are “reverse Bitcoin.” James’ question drew a skeptical response from Fintricity founder & CEO Alpesh Doshi, who took a dim view about the prospects for widespread crypto adoption:

“I don’t think it’s reverse bitcoin. It’s a defensive mechanism. I think mass adoption of digital currencies will happen. I don’t think mass adoption of cryptocurrency will happen, not yet.”

The question of CBDCs soon turned political. Speakers throughout the summit found it hard to divorce the race to create the first CBDC from its undeniable political connotations and this panel was no different. Caroline Thomas of the Innovation Advisory Objective Group didn’t mince her words when laying out her analysis of CBDC development:

“The biggest amount of content is coming in from china. Major chinese Blockchains are demonstrating the use cases. When we talk about central banks coming together. It’s not just Facebook and Libra and so on, it’s geo-politics.”

Fintricity’s Doshi said that the adoption of digital currencies is directly linked to the ongoing battle for the ultimate financial prize: The world reserve currency status. Doshi told the audience that from a geo-political perspective, China’s ascent to pole economic position seemed certain:

“Look at it from a geopolitical, payments perspect. China is moving faster because the reserve currency is the dollar and they want to maintain this. China want it to be their currency. It will do this because it’s easy to move it around the world. China has the second biggest economy. It will become the reserve currency and that is why China is doing it.”

Regarding who would come out on top in terms of owning the customer in a world of mass adoption, there was clear consensus among the panelists: Libra. Customer Devoted’s Sandberg said that it all boils down to who can offer the best service through data insights:

“Who’s got the most data? That’s the answer. I care about using a product that is more personal to me. Facebook are able, through their algorithms, to understand the next product that customers should be recommended. The experience will be superior.”

For Doshi, it’s about reach and ease of use. Doshi outlined his view that the sheer number of users that Facebook already has, combined with the potential for Libra to undermine state fiscal sovereignty places the tech giant firmly in the lead:

“Libra is the one, there are 2 billion people on Facebook. You just go online, find someone and pay them. That is much easier than trying to send 10 dollars to the same person. It’s going to get adoption. Central banks are scared because the reach Facebook has is so great.”

More days of blockchain discussion to come

The two-day FWW blockchain summit may have drawn to a close, but Blockchain Week here in London soldiers on, despite the COVID-19 hysteria that continues to grip the country. There might not be toilet paper, hand sanitizer or much in the way of public sanity, yet CryptoCompare’s Digital Assets Summit is still scheduled for Tuesday. Stay tuned for live Cointelegraph coverage, interviews, and features from the event.

However, with news of the Washington D.C.’s blockchain summit cancellation due to Coronavirus fears breaking only hours ago, it feels like the fate of London Blockchain Week could change at a moment’s notice.

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[memozing]

#online learning

[robertbryantblog]

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[mathematicianadda]

Proper Jordan schemes exist!

A new field of research has just been created by Misha Klin, Misha Muzychuk and Sven Reichard: proper Jordan schemes.

They answered a question which I posed some time ago (I don’t remember when), about whether such objects exist. I would not be interested in “empty set theory”, but now we know that they do exist, so we can go ahead and study them.

A little background. You can find more here or here (the second of these references gives some further reading).

Jordan algebras

A Jordan algebra is a vector space (here over the real numbers) with a multiplication ∗ satisfying

A∗B = B∗A;

(A∗B)∗(A∗A) = A∗(B∗(A∗A)).

These algebras were introduced by Pascual Jordan as a mathematical foundation for quantum mechanics. While they have not caught on for this purpose, they are used in some parts of statistics, especially for estimation of variance components.

Any associative algebra gives rise to a Jordan algebra, on setting A∗B = (AB+BA)/2. Certain subsets of matrix algebras are also closed under this product and define Jordan algebrasi. Most significantly, the symmetric matrices form a Jordan algebra. An important theorem, the Jordan–von Neumann–Wigner theorem, asserts that apart from some infinite families arising in this way, the only simpleJordan algebra is an exceptional 27-dimensional algebra related to the octonions and the Lie group E6.

Coherent configurations and Jordan schemes

A coherent configuration is a set C of zero-one matrices satisfying

the sum of the matrices in C is the all-one matrix J;

the identity is the sum of some of the matrices in C;

the set C is closed under transposition;

the linear span of C is an algebra (closed under matrix multiplication).

The axioms, of course, have a combinatorial interpretation, which you can work out with sufficient diligence.

The configuration is homogeneous if the second condition is replaced by the stronger version asserting that the identity is one of the matrices in C. If in addition all the matrices in C are symmetric, we speak of an association scheme. (I am aware that different terminology is used by different authors here; I have discussed this elsewhere, but let me use my own preferred conventions here.)

For much more on this, see several talks at last year’s Pilsen conference, which can be found here.

Now the definition of a (homogeneous) Jordan scheme is obtained from that of an association scheme by replacing matrix multiplication by the Jordan product A∗B = (AB+BA)/2.

It is easy to see that, if we take a homogeneous association scheme and “symmetrise” it (by replacing a non-symmetric matrix in C and its transpose by their sum) is a homogeneous Jordan scheme.

My question, which Klin, Muzychuk and Reichard have answered negatively, was:

Is every homogeneous Jordan scheme the symmetrisation of a homogeneous coherent configuration?

So now it makes sense to say that a homogeneous Jordan scheme is proper if it is not the symmetrisation of a homogeneous coherent configuration, and to develop the theory of such objects, as Klin, Muzychuk and Reichard have begun to do.

The example

Actually they have many examples, but I will briefly describe the first one, based on a presentation by Sven Reichard at the Slovenian graph theory conference today.

Start with the alternating group A5 acting transitively on 15 points, the stabiliser of a point being the Klein group V4. Because this subgroup is contained with index 3 in A4, the group is imprimitive, with five blocks of size 3. So apart from equality, there are two invariant relations forming five ordered triangles and the reverse, and three further symmetric relations.

One of the triangles is the island, and the other four make up the continent. The edges joining the island to the continent are called bridges, and are of three colours (corresponding to the three further symmetric relations). Now swap two of the colours on the bridges, leaving the remaining edges alone. Symmetrising the resulting structure gives a homogeneous Jordan scheme, which is proper.

Questions

Here are a few questions which could be looked at.

Does the Jordan–von Neumann–Wigner theorem have any relevance to proper Jordan schemes? In particular, is there one whose Jordan algebra involves the exceptional simple Jordan algebra?

Given a connected simple graph, think of it as an electric circuit, where each edge is a one-ohm resistor. The effective resistance between pairs of terminals defines a metric, called resistance distance, on the vertex set. This is a refinement of the graph structure, similar to that produced by the symmetric version of Weisfeiler–Leman stabilisation. What is the precise relation between these concepts?

Pascual Jordan

Curiously enough, the name of Pascual Jordan (who introduced Jordan algebras) came up in a completely different context yesterday; I would like to say a bit about him.

Jordan is described as one of the unsung heroes of quantum mechanics. It was in a joint paper by Born, Heisenberg and Jordan that the matrix mechanics approach to quantum mechanics was first published (as opposed to Schrödinger’s wave function approach). It is said that the mathematics of matrices in the paper is Jordan’s work. The Nobel Prize was awarded to Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac. Jordan also invented Fermi–Dirac statistics, but because of an unfortunate publication delay he was beaten into print.

According to the MacTutor biography, the reason for the neglect may have been in part his membership of the Nazi party. He wrote in support of the party, but strongly opposed the more extreme views of Ludwig Bieberbach, who believed that there was a real difference between say “French mathematics” and “German mathematics”, and that teaching “German mathematics” to children would increase their “Germanness” (to put it rather crudely).

Anyway, the context in which Jordan’s name came up was a very entertaining lecture given by one of this year’s St Andrews honorary graduands, Jim Al-Khalili, on the new subject of quantum biology. He pointed out that the first paper ever written on quantum biology was by Pascual Jordan, although nobody took it very seriously at the time. It was generally thought that quantum systems would decohere so rapidly in the messy, hot surroundings of a living cell that no effects would be observed. Jim put the opposite “spin” on it: rather than the environment interfering with they system, we can regard the system as exporting information to the environment. It is possible that European robins detect the Earth’s magnetic field (for navigational purposes) by a quantum effect in the bird’s eye, where the collapse of entanglement gives a signal which can be transmitted to the brain by the optic nerve.

from Peter Cameron's Blog https://ift.tt/2ZYRvsC from Blogger https://ift.tt/2Xia0LF

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[cameronwjones]

18 Time-saving Event Planning Tips

Save time, work more efficiently, own your events. While event hacks might be a stretch, these time-saving event tips will help cut out the noise and focus on your main objectives.

Let's be honest, event planning is a stressful job. At any given time there are a number of jobs that need to get done and it can seem like every deadline comes right down to the wire. The 18 tips in this blog post will help you save time during the event planning process and ensure your next event is wildly successful. Let's dive right in.

1. Start Early

As you know, planning an event is a monumental task. The more time you can give yourself to nail down every little detail, the better. So start as early as possible. This will not only allow you to maintain your sanity, but also give you an advantage when booking a venue, finding event staff (we'll talk more about this later in the post), and putting out unavoidable fires.

2. Leverage Event Software

Want to maximize event ROI? Then do yourself a favor and leverage the power of event software when planning and managing your next event. This type of tool will save you time (on average, businesses that use event software save 223 hours a year) and craft a unified brand experience for each of your attendees.

"[Event software] helped us take full advantage of our event data and draw key insights that were crucial to our success."

—Melissa Moore, Co-founder of the Lean Startup Co.

3. Invest In Essential Event Tools

Even software, while incredibly important, isn't the only tool you should consider investing in. There are other important event tools worthy of your consideration as well, such as project management apps like Trello, marketing automation tools like HubSpot (more on this below), software integration tools like Zapier, and event streaming software like Livestream.

There are plenty of amazing apps out there that will make your life as an event planner less stressful. The key is finding the tools that work for you and the kind of events you manage. So do some experimenting and create a custom event technology stack that fits your needs and your budget.

4. Focus on the Priority

Knowing how to best prioritize your time and efforts is a common productivity tip. The more focused you can be on the right objectives, the more success you'll see. This is especially true when planning an event.

There are a million different things that need to be accomplished in order for your event to be deemed a success. Where do you start? Understanding what's most important and what deserves priority will allow you to focus on the big wins; the things that really matter.

First, determine what your overarching vision is. Then prioritize your to-do list based on important tasks, not just urgent ones. Finally, tackle each item on your list one at a time. This simple framework will ensure proper time management when event planning.

5. Follow A Proven Process

As we've already mentioned, event planning isn't for the faint of heart. The good news is, there are proven templates and processes you can follow. You aren't the first person to plan an event and you won't be the last. Look to the successes and failures of those who have gone before you to gain valuable insights.

This event strategy guidewill get you started. In it, you'll learn everything you need to know about hosting a successful event in 2019 — the planning, launching, promoting, managing, and even wrapping processes are all covered in detail (more on this below).

6. Create A List

Let's delve deeper into prioritization and how creating lists can assist. Whether you consider yourself a "list person" or not, writing things down and structuring your day in a specific way has its benefits.

Start by determining every single thing you need to get done. This list should include the big things like booking a venue and finding sponsors, and the smaller (but still important) things like hiring an event logo designer (or coordinating with your in-house design team).

Once everything has been written down, you can begin to schedule each task for specific days. Remember to set deadlines for every to-do item and check them off once they've been completed. This will keep you organized and on track.

An example of a prioritization sheet could look like this:

Task Name

Priority

Size

Owner

Due Date

Launch Event Website

High

Large

Sam

7/20/19

Confirm Catering Details With Vendor

Low

Small

Alex

8/16/19

Event Press Release

Medium

Medium

Alex

7/23/19

7. Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

Have we mentioned yet that event planning is a colossal endeavor? It is. And that's why you shouldn't attempt to do everything by yourself. Delegation is key to hosting a successful event

It will also engage your team and help them feel more invested in their work, which will boost their productivity and decrease company turnover. 

Do your best to delegate the right tasks to the right employees, give them clear guidelines and expectations. Then allow them to work independently. Delegation isn't useful if you constantly need to look over their shoulder.

8. Hire Quality Help

Sometimes delegating tasks to your team isn't enough. You may find it necessary to hire event freelancers to help you achieve your goals. What can a freelancer help you with? Many things including website development, customer support, and event photography.

Discover where the holes are in your team, then plug with talented individuals from sites like UpWork and Freelancer or online communities like Eventovation.

9. Find Volunteers

Not every event helper needs to be a hired gun. Finding event volunteers is totally possible, especially if your event's main purpose is to raise awareness or money for a charitable cause. You just have to ask.

Start with the people you know. Will any of your employees be willing to lend a helping hand. When you've exhausted your personal contacts, look to volunteer networks. Software tools like Volgistics and VolunteerHub give event planners access to information on thousands of skilled volunteers.

Remember, just because you aren't paying volunteers doesn't mean they shouldn't receive any incentives for helping out. If possible, offer helpers free admission to your event, complimentary food, or free products from your company to drum up interest.

10. Partner With An Agency

Sometimes the best way to ensure your event is a success is to partner with an event agency that specializes in helping companies host amazing get-togethers. Fortunately for you, we've already done the hard work of finding these organizations.

The list, linked to below, contains over 150 top-tier event and experiential marketing companies. Some focus on specific event types, others are full-service, but each is great at what they do. If you feel in over your head, enlist the help of one of these event agencies.

11. Use Marketing Automation Software

Event marketing automation software such as HubSpot, Marketo, and Salesforce, and to a lesser extent, Get Response, Infusionsoft, and Autopilot, allows event organizers to better engage attendees and produce more personalized event experiences.

Imagine being able to, once an attendee registers for an event, automatically add them to your company's CRM records, send them pre-written emails at specific times that correspond with exactly where they're at in the customer journey, and more.

This is all possible with the right software platforms and a bit of knowledge and forethought.

A sample marketing automation workflow for an event.

12. Invest In CRM Software

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is essential for most businesses in this day and age. Your company's customers want personalized experiences. This is nearly impossible to provide without an accurate and deep knowledge of your customer base.

Events are key touchpoints in multichannel marketing strategies. Tracking how an event contributes to a customer or prospect’s lifetime journey with your company is a valuable metric to have. Every registrant's details should be synced to the CRM of your choice after your event, then incorporated into future marketing and sales efforts.

13. Say Goodbye To Manual Reporting

Many event planners tend to do their reporting manually via spreadsheets. Not only does this take a lot more time than it needs to, but it's also more error-prone. Instead, use software to automatically crunch event metrics and generate reports.

We recommend using data visualization software that can reconcile data from multiple sources including your company's CRM and marketing automation solutions. But it would also be wise to invest in software tools (like Bizzabo) that are able to generate their own comprehensible and easy to understand reports about event performance.

A glance at reporting in Bizzabo.

14. Integrate Your Event Technology Stack

We've mentioned numerous pieces of software and technology so far in this post. Each, when used correctly, is incredibly useful. But the real trick is getting each tool to play nicely with the other apps you plan to use. That's where event software integrations come into play.

Some software solutions will integrate with one another out-of-the box. Others require using a third-party integration solution like Zapier. This means that your event management software, CRM tool, email marketing platform, and more will all work together seamlessly, reducing the amount of tedious data entry you'll need to do.

15. Create A System To Scale

We recently got a chance to sit down with our friend Aleksandra Panyukhina, Head of Event Marketing at SEMrush, and learned quite a bit. Her team participated in dozens of events in 2018 on five different continents. So when it comes to event planning, she's a verified expert.

In the interview, Aleksandra talked about the importance of systems and scaling. One of the SEMrush keys to success has been their ability to maintain a consistent brand image, no matter the size or location of their next event. This can only be done by developing the proper systems that will scale and maintaining clear communication with team members.

16. Measure, Measure, Measure!

Measuring event ROI is an important practice. After all, you can't accurately determine if an event is successful or not without understanding what your company is gaining in return for all the time, effort, and expenses it's taken to host the event.

Unfortunately, tracking event ROI isn't always easy, but there are a few tools that can help. Marketing platforms like Bizzabo and HubSpot, business intelligence software such as Sisense and Tableau, attribution platforms like Google Analytics, and your company's CRM software can all help you track event ROI.

It's important to remember that you should be aiming to create value with your events, not just immediate monetary gain. An event that loses money, but generates a large amount of high-quality leads may still be deemed successful.

17. Make Sure Your Email Game Is On Point

Email for event planners is a necessity, though it's all too easy to get bogged down when messages are constantly hitting your inbox. It can feel like you're always playing catch-up and the goal of inbox-zero will never be met. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Here are a few of our favorite email management tips for event planners:

Use Technology: An app like Boomerang can help remind you to follow up on emails you don't hear back on.

Use Canned Responses: How much of your time is wasted sending essentially the same reply to multiple people? Get that time back and leverage canned responses.

Filter Your Messages: By better organizing your inbox, you can reduce stress levels and increase efficiency. Perhaps all messages from a certain client go into one folder. Or maybe you create a "Respond Later" folder so you don't constantly feel the need to respond to every message right away.

Hit the Unsubscribe Button: Do you honestly read and enjoy every single message that floats through your inbox? Probably not. Start unsubscribing and reduce the emails you need to filter through every day.

18. Expect The Unexpected

Finally, with so many variables involved in event planning, not everything will always go as expected. It's better to plan for this.

We recommend you schedule extra time for last minute requests, especially in the final few weeks before your event takes place. That way you aren't caught off-guard and will have enough time to accomplish what needs to get done.

Your Turn: Efficiently Planning Your Event

These tips, when used together, act as a sort of event planning template and will help ensure your next event is a success. We encourage you to read through these strategies again and begin implementing as many as possible into your event planning workflow.

Looking for more event planning wisdom, check out this report on the latest event trends.

from Cameron Jones Updates https://blog.bizzabo.com/time-saving-event-planning-tips

[jesusvasser]

Our Pro Racer Tests the Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy Race Car

The introduction of the Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy Championship occurred recently at the Silverstone motorsports complex, home of the Formula 1 British Grand Prix. Jaguar Racing director James Barclay was quick to reference Jaguar’s storied racing history, and my thoughts went immediately to the legendary Jaguar D-types from the 1950s. Jaguar much later dabbled in F1 in the early 2000s, in Prototype GT racing in the ’80s and ’90s, and nowadays we see the new F-Type SVR GT4 in competition. Jaguar officially entered into the Formula E fray for the series’ third season (2016/2017) with its I-Type2. (Formula E seasons normally begin in Asia around November.)

A handful of automotive companies are involved in racing almost permanently, some never. Jaguar is somewhere in the middle, and its in-and-out approach is linked more to sales and budget rather than to lack of corporate interest. Engineers, designers, and media folks don’t usually make decisions about racing, but the Jaguar team I met at Silverstone showed genuine enthusiasm for the new I-Pace racing endeavor, something that was great to see and hear. Indeed, recent signs have shown Jaguar walking the performance-marketing road again: In November 2017, a “near production”-spec (Jag’s words) XE SV Project 8 smashed the Nurburgring four-door saloon/sedan lap record with a 7-minute, 21.23-second time. That was 11 seconds quicker than the previous record holder, an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio.

The weather was picture perfect as we arrived at Silverstone, where a tiny one-lane bridge led us over the F1 layout to the Stowe Circuit. Stowe lies completely inside the main F1 track and is used mostly for testing and tuning. It’s an interesting track, in a high-speed-autocross kind of way.

The main reason for being here was to drive the new I-Pace eTrophy electric race car. First, though, I climbed aboard an I-Pace street car for an interesting, gated-autocross-style exercise. An area the size of maybe half of a football field featured eight random gates denoted by cones. The cones flashed green (drive through) or blue (next gate to turn green), then red when the test was over. It was an exceptionally slow-speed course, but handily showed the I-Pace’s “right now” acceleration, braking, and excellent low-speed handling.

Really, though, we were here to better understand Jaguar’s involvement in electric racing. As you probably know, Formula E uses all-electric formula-style race cars, with events held on temporary city-street circuits. In 2018, New York was the only U.S. venue for a series that holds rounds on five continents. The argument in favor of Formula E is that it is directly relevant to the fast-growing trend toward all-electric vehicles. Several major automotive companies are players in Formula E; the series hoped to have four large corporate series sponsors by 2018 yet it already has 10. Six of those 10 are automobile manufacturers: Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Renault, and Jaguar. ABB corporation, which specializes in fast-charging technology and recently signed on as title sponsor, has made the official series name the ABB FIA Formula E Championship.

Formula E’s second-generation race car is due next season; apparently it’s a major move forward in design, power, and handling. Also addressed was the present need for teams to utilize two cars during each race, due to battery-life limitations. The irony of this apparent inefficiency compared to the series’ desired “green” image was not lost on the organizers, so the new car will run entire races on one charge.

But those Formula E machines won’t be the only all-electric cars racing on the series’ event weekends. I would have loved to been in the Jaguar board meeting where somebody stood up with a straight face and suggested developing the I-Pace SUV into a race car—with its very own 20-car, I-Pace World Championship racing series. Yet here we are, at Silverstone with an I-Pace e Trophy race car. Jaguar made a three-year commitment to run the series alongside Formula E, and there will be 10 race weekends on the schedule for this season.

Jaguar will keep and maintain all 20 cars between events to ensure parity. It will also provide the crew and an engineer for each car/driver. The cost to run the series is around $600,000 per season, plus a $125,000 annual lease. A team can buy the car for $260,000, saving on extended lease costs. Crash damage incurs additional charges. This will essentially be an “arrive and drive” racing series.

The Jaguar race team worked with the FIA to set up I-Pace safety regulations. In the race car, a standard I-Pace battery pack is nestled inboard of the roll cage to better protect the pack from impacts. There are two isolator switches mounted in the center console, for separate battery shutdown in case of a crash. The race car uses the same 145-kW electric motors found in the street car; they produce the equivalent of 400 hp, driving all four wheels. The motors, along with the 90-kW battery pack, produce 500 amps of juice—you would not want a driver or emergency worker receiving a shock from that kind of power. To help with this, the I-Pace shows a green light front, rear, and on the center dash when there is no live power. If the car instead shows a red or blue light, there could be live electricity around the car. Emergency workers will carry specialized equipment to combat any crash-related issues that may involve electricity.

The interior reminds me of a GT4 race car. You see production switchgear alongside a modern electronic race dash, plus plenty of adjustment switches on the removable steering wheel. Weight distribution is 52/48R front/rear in the normal I-Pace, 48/52 in the race car. The latter weighs 4,320 pounds, a 450-pound reduction compared the street version. Easily replaceable carbon-fiber body panels are found front and rear, but most of the bodywork is the original aluminum. The new hood and front splitter better direct air for cooling the brakes and radiator, and create anti-lift. There is a minimal amount of downforce; if you add up all the aero bits, plus the 1.18-inch lower ride height, you get around 50 pounds of total downforce, which is less than a Honda Civic Type R. The upgraded (twice the capacity of stock) A/C system helps cool the battery pack and the electric motors.

The race and production I-Pace produce the same power; 0-to-60-mph for the race car takes about 4.5 seconds and top speed is 121 mph—similar numbers to the street I-Pace. Those are pedestrian figures for a race car, but I started racing in the mid ’80s in a 50-hp Renault Alliance spec-series car and had a blast, as did the fans who followed that series. Also, there’s never been a boring Mazda Miata race, even if just two cars are running, which has never happened. So I can get onboard with the I-Pace’s output.

Sitting in the I-Pace eTrophy felt pretty much like any other race car. There are only two pedals; no use for a clutch. Note: to launch fast, no brake hold is needed because max power is produced immediately when you bury the “gas” pedal.

As I rolled the I-Pace racer down pit lane, all I heard was rattling anti-roll bars, solid suspension bushings, and anything else not welded together. I now know race brakes make a total racket when not drowned out by a race engine, something I never considered before in my entire driving career. I had to resist the temptation to come in and ask the crew to check every nut and bolt on the car, because it sounded like at least 90 percent of them were ready to fall off. Once I got rolling, though, the can of ball bearings effect was less obvious due to my focus on going quickly.

The Stowe Circuit is quite short, with 11 corners, and several of them were actually chicanes made with cones. The Bosch ABS brakes (15.55-inch front/13.98 rear) allowed aggressive modulation. There is no stability control. The off-throttle regenerative braking can produce up to 0.4 g of deceleration. It’s slightly adjustable and does play a part while trail braking.

The grip of the specially developed Michelin Pilot Sport tires feels equivalent to a PS4S street tire. The race tires are similar in size to the production I-Pace’s 265/40R22 tires and have full tread depth, which avoids the need for rain tires. (Likewise, Formula E uses “all-weather” Michelin race tires.)

My cornering-speed limits were determined by how much I could rotate the I-Pace on entry. It behaves very much like most all-wheel drive cars on a track, quickly exhibiting understeer when you try to add power mid-corner. The more rotation I could carry into and through a corner, the better. You can adjust front to rear torque distribution, but for now the adjustment range only moves torque from 48-percent rear to 52-percent rear. I won’t be surprised if the series’ drivers quickly ask for more adjustment range.

The stiffer suspension setup versus the production I-Pace made controlling the rate of rotation on corner entry a challenge, but not impossible. Personally, I would add some compliance to the suspension if I actually raced one of these cars in the series. Softening up the suspension and antiroll bars would slow down body roll for corner entry and help the driver transition back to power. Anything you can do to increase the roll compliance of a heavy race car, especially one with limited mechanical grip, helps. I learned this long ago while racing street-based cars on regular street tires.

I thoroughly enjoyed my laps in Jaguar’s I-Pace eTrophy race car. As an aside, as I walked away from the car I noticed its outside mirrors: It occurred to me they might last about three turns, of lap one, of practice one, of race weekend one. Keep an eye on that.

The eTrophy Championship races are short, scheduled to run just 25 minutes plus one lap. Google and YouTube metrics say younger audiences prefer shorter entertainment cycles, and Jaguar will focus on finding the correct marketing approach here. Another piece of the entertainment jigsaw will be the willingness of the series’ drivers to race side by side “everywhere” on the tight concrete-lined tracks; nobody likes a permanent pace-car situation.

A world championship street-race series, with 20 equally powered, 4,300-pound Jaguar SUVs, should be something to see. It’s fair to say brand differentiation is alive and well at Jaguar. I’m looking forward to the first race, and my hat’s off to Jaguar for daring to try.

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