" I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY,"- John Lennon

City floating on the sea could be just 3 years away

By Shelby Erdman 
CNN

(CNN) -- A floating city off the coast of San Francisco may sound like science fiction, but it could be reality in the not-too-distant future.

The Seasteading Institute has drawn up plans for a floating city off the coast of San Francisco.

The Seasteading Institute already has drawn up plans for the construction of a homestead on the Pacific Ocean.

One project engineer described the prototype as similar to a cruise ship, but from a distance the cities might look like oil-drilling platforms.

According to the plans, the floating cities would not only look different from their land-based counterparts, but they might operate differently, too.

Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer who now works for the Seasteading Institute, said floating cities are the perfect places to experiment with new forms of government.

Some of the new political ideas the group is tossing around include legalizing marijuana and making intellectual property communal -- so that everyone would take ownership in art produced on the city at sea.

"The idea isn't just about getting away from rules or getting rid of rules. It's about a system that encourages experimentation with different political systems," he said.

Don't Miss

• Seasteading Institute: Info, FAQ, blog, forums

Friedman said the floating city may be built in modular pieces so that city blocks and neighborhoods can be recombined to create new urban layouts.

The idea of building cities on the sea is not new, he said, but the Seasteading Institute has come closer to realizing the goal than others.

"A lot of people over the past hundred plus years have had this idea and even specifically building cities on the ocean to try out new forms of government," he said. "But they've pretty much been totally imagined and if they did try, they totally failed."

There are several unknowns about future attempts to create floating cities, said Christian Cermelli, an engineer and architect with Marine Innovation and Technology, based in San Francisco.

Cermelli, who is part of a team of designers creating a blueprint for the first seastead, said it's unclear if construction is possible -- or what it would cost.

Still, a prototype for the idea may be finished in as little as three years, he said.

Friedman said seasteads are loosely based on oil rigs, but with important modifications.

"We care more about sunlight and open space, so the specifications are different," he said. "Also, oil platforms are fixed in place. We think it's important to have more modular cities. So you would build a city out of buildings that can actually be separated and rearranged."

Cermelli said the ocean cities may use technology from suspension bridges "to expand the space at sea and basically get a roomier platform."

Friedman says the idea of seasteading has met a range of reactions.

"Some people think we're crazy. A lot of people think we're crazy," he said. "Some people think terrible things could happen, others think it would be great."

About 600 people have joined the Seasteading Institute.

Some of them, like Gayle Young, say the idea is exciting partly because it's so different.

"I love the idea because it's audacious. It's big," she said. "It's about pushing frontiers."

- A solution to global warming and the submergence of natural islands ?

March 9, 2009 -- Updated 1219 GMT (2019 HKT)

• STORY HIGHLIGHTS
• An adventurer is building a sailboat out of thousands of recycled plastic soda bottles 
  
• He plans to sail it this spring from California to Australia, a journey of 11,000 miles
  
• Expedition leader is David de Rothschild, scion of a wealthy British banking family
  
• Boat, the Plastiki, will be a symbol of how consumer waste can be repurposed

By Brandon Griggs and Jeff King 
CNN

SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- Imagine collecting thousands of empty plastic bottles, lashing them together to make a boat and sailing the thing from California to Australia, a journey of 11,000 miles through treacherous seas.

This 60-foot sailboat, the Plastiki, is being built from more than 12,000 recycled plastic bottles.

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You'd have to be crazy, or trying to make a point. David de Rothschild is trying to make a point.

De Rothschild hopes his one-of-a-kind vessel, now being built on a San Francisco pier, will boost recycling of plastic bottles, which he says are a symbol of global waste. Except for the masts, which are metal, everything on the 60-foot catamaran is made from recycled plastic.

"It's all sail power," he said. "The idea is to put no kind of pollution back into the atmosphere, or into our oceans for that matter, so everything on the boat will be composted. Everything will be recycled. Even the vessel is going to end up being recycled when we finish."

De Rothschild's vessel, scheduled to set sail from San Francisco in April, is called the Plastiki. Its name is an homage of sorts to Thor Heyerdahl, the fabled Norwegian explorer who in 1947 sailed 4,300 miles across the Pacific on the Kon-Tiki, a raft made from balsa wood.

De Rothschild is something of an adventurer himself. The scion of a wealthy British banking family, he is one of only several dozen people to traverse both the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps. In 2005 he founded Adventure Ecology, an organization that uses field expeditions to call attention to environmental issues.  Watch how the boat is constructed »

Joining him on the Plastiki will be a permanent crew of three sailors and scientists plus a handful of other crew members who will rotate through the voyage. The Plastiki is expected to stop in Hawaii, Tuvalu and Fiji on its way to Sydney, a trip estimated to take more than 100 days.

Don't Miss

• In Depth: Edge of Discovery

The plastic sailboat is taking shape in an old pier building not far from this city's famous Fisherman's Wharf. Here, thousands of two-liter soda bottles are being stripped of their labels, washed, filled with dry-ice powder and then resealed. The dry ice sublimates into carbon dioxide gas and pressurizes the bottle, making it rigid.

The vessel's twin hulls will be filled with 12,000 to 16,000 bottles. Skin-like panels made from recycled PET, a woven plastic fabric, will cover the hulls and a watertight cabin, which sleeps four.

"This actually is the same material that is made out of bottles," said de Rothschild of the PET fabric. "We actually wrap the PET fabric over the PET foam and then basically put it under a vacuum, heat it, press it and create these long PET panels. So that means the boat is, technically, one giant bottle."

Two wind turbines and an array of solar panels will charge a bank of 12-volt batteries, which will power several onboard laptop computers, a GPS and SAT phone.

Only about 10 percent of the Plastiki will be made from new materials, de Rothschild said. He declined to reveal how much it's costing him to build the boat.

"We could potentially put together a boat that costs a fraction of what normal conventional boats are made of," he said. "The idea is to take the Plastiki, break it down [after the voyage], and put it back into the system. So, it may come out being a jacket, a bag, more bottles. It's infinitely recyclable."

The ultimate goal of the Plastiki voyage is not just to encourage people to embrace clean, renewable energy but also to see consumer waste as a potential resource.

That's what this is all about -- showcasing cradle-to-cradle products rather than cradle-to-grave," de Rothschild said.

Whether the Plastiki will successfully complete its unique journey remains to be seen. But to conservationists concerned about the amount of energy required to manufacture and distribute plastic bottles, its symbolic message is a welcome one.

Madagascar’s army gives leaders ultimatum10/03 19:39 CET

Madagascar’s army chief has given the country’s feuding leaders three days to sort out the chaotic state of the nation. The ultimatum comes on the same day the Malgasy defence minister resigned after just a month in the job. Faced with a mutiny by some soldiers, he hinted he had been pressured into quitting.

Some 135 people have been killed and the island’s economy devastated by a political tug-of-war between the president and the mayor of the capital, Antananarivo. On a day of drama, President Marc Ravalomanana admitted in a television and radio address that he had made mistakes, was ready to listen to the people and would find a solution.

As for his opponent, Andry Rajoelina, he is under United Nations protection in an unknown location. He had been staying at the French embassy but pro-government protestors tracked him down and started to throw stones at the building.

Rajoelina has led accusations that the president is a dictator who has failed to tackle poverty. The government has brushed him off as a troublemaker. A government crackdown on protests met with widespread international condemnation when the military opened fire at a rally in February, killing 28 people. Now the army has threatened to intervene without bias against either side if the crisis is not solved by the weekend.

 - A situation we hope not to see in Malaysia !

Are Tibetans losing faith with “middle way’‘10/03 19:46 CET

For half a century he has been an inspirational figure and a symbol of hope for Tibetans at home and abroad. From his base in India the 14th Dalai Lama has championed their cause as Tibet’s most high profile exile. But he has modified his stance over the years. In 1979 the spiritual leader dropped his call for complete independence, urging China to give his homeland political autonomy instead.

Many exiled Tibetans would like to go further and but some say their patience with Beijing may not last. Chemi Wangme, a Tibetan born in exile said: “I feel sad, I feel sad that I am still a refugee over here in some other country. I am a Tibetan but I have never seen my land. So in this 50th year I hope that some day there will come a day when I will be able to go back to my country.”

Many of those who took part in or lived through campaigns of violence against Chinese rule in the past believe armed struggle is ultimately futile. They seem resigned to their fate and can only hope their dreams will be realised by future generations.

Dhanga Phunsok, a former Tibetan pro-independence fighter said: “Independence is not possible while I am alive because I am now 78. But freedom is possible for the younger generation. There is a hope of getting independence in Tibet.”

But are younger people willing to be as patient as their elders? Dhanga’s granddaughter is not so sure. “Because many people, they sacrificed till now and I don’t think their sacrifice… their sacrifice to our country will not go to waste. We have to struggle to get our independence. We have to struggle still,” she said.

Today it is hard to gage which path the six million who live in Tibet would chose. The Chinese authorities maintain an iron grip on the population and foreign journalists are kept at bay. 50 years on from the failed uprising and there is no sign of Beijing compromising on any kind of self determination.

Print Article  Email Article Mojos, the ‘F’ word and the future of newspapers   Meidyatama Suryodiningrat  The Jakarta Post Publication Date: 11-03-2009 Newspapers are an endangered species. Like the lumbering dinosaur, the cumbersome newsprint is making way to the more nimble genus and lithe platforms of new media. The fate of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun,The Minneapolis Tribune and Denver’s Rocky Mountain News is akin to that of the 40-ton brachiosaurus. The global financial crisis is an extinction level event for traditional media in the same way that climactic changes obliterated the Mesozoic era. To our south, News Ltd. (part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.) which publishes The Australian, and Fairfax, publisher of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, made several hundred retrenchments in the past six months with more likely to come. The Australian Financial Review is shutting its bureaus in Jakarta and London. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has stepped in by further subsidizing dwindling French newspaper subscription. In Britain, the government is debating aid for its regional papers, while in India several publications are effectively holding the election-facing government to ransom by “beseeching” tax breaks and sponsored advertising. The demise of print media is not all due to the Internet or the haughtiness of print journalism. Even online advertising rates are not what they used to be in the dotcom heyday of the late 1990s. The inability to adopt to new mindsets, a misguided interpretation of free information, and the conglomeration of media ownership seem to have been the catalysts for the downfall. Today, everyone is a journalist. Modern technology embodies the two essentials that characterise field reporting: speed and convenience. The pen may still be mightier than the sword, but the ubiquitous mobile phone is the quill of digital journalism. Most print organisations, especially in Asia, have only in the last few years begun to realise the concept of Mojos – mobile journalists. Reporters capable of breaking news, in-depth stories and digital information (webcasts, blogs and video) all at once. Rather than rightsizing their young editorial staff to accommodate the new platforms, most organisations instead enlarge operations by creating separate entities, print and digital, which creates dualism and doubles overhead. Specialists – photojournalists, investigative reporters, op-ed writers – are essential elements, but the bulk should be platform-agnostic journalists who can convey the established values of conventional quality journalism in a new medium. Technology has allowed everyone to be a journalist. Citizen journalists are a qualified truth in modern journalism. However, it would be a mistake to allow the primary dissemination of information – the foundations of democratic society – to go to blogs and mailing lists permeated by rants and foolish outbursts. During the 150th anniversary of the Atlantic Monthly last year, editors argued that reading habits had not declined, but the way people were paying for their reading had changed. Despite technological advances, conventional and digital media retain the same model in generating revenue: page viewed advertising. When advertising tanks, so does the publication. When the Internet burst onto the scene, the (un)conventional wisdom was to provide everything for free. For anything other than premium porn, the “F” word (free) was the pervasive dictum on the Web. That precept is now seriously being re-examined. Good stories, good photography, good art and especially good journalism cannot pay for itself. Consumers act like one, by paying for it! The lessons of millions of songs, books, newspapers and movies sold on Apple’s iTunes, Amazon’s Kindle and Netflix are evidence that consumers are willing to pay, as long as a practical, safe payment system with immediate delivery options is readily available. Furthermore, the present perils of many newspapers may not necessarily be due to poor editorial quality or the absolute decline of readership, but the way big business have treated newspapers as a portfolio investment. Stephen Quinn, lecturer of journalism and media management at Deakin University in Australia, said that if a newspaper is on a backslide due to economic recession, it can survive with sound management and innovation. “If the issue is debt, then it’s difficult,” he remarked at an editors’ meeting over the weekend in Bangkok to mark the 10th Anniversary of the Asia News Network, an alliance of 21 newspapers in 18 countries. (The Jakarta Post is a member of the network.) Hence the doom that saw most American papers file for bankruptcy. The utmost concern for many newspaper editors, however, is not that they are a dying species, but that they may become a protected species under the aegis of the government. Developments in France and India are a sellout of the Fourth Estate. Mathias Döpfner, publisher of Bild in Germany, in a recent interview conceded that talk was rampant that the bailout model for banks and US carmakers should be extended to newspapers. “That would be a dark day for press freedom,” he said. “A bankrupt media company is better than a government-funded one ! The bell tolls the early demise of New Straits Times ?