From Istanbul To Sand Hill Road

asmallworld.net: Elite Social Network, or Facebook Roadkill?

I started getting emails from asmallworld.net, one of the social networks I belong to prompt activity.  Status updates, activity updates etc.  They didn't used to send those.  I don't like it, it feels like spam.  So why did they start?  Weren't they growing just fine without it?  Could be, but pretty much everybody I know there, is now on Facebook and that's where I connect with them.  They don't show up on Comscore but here is their last years Alexa graph.

You have to take Alexa with a grain of salt, but it says their pageview are half of what they used to be before Facebook opened its platform. I wonder what other social networks are feeling the same pinch?

Bounding The Biodiversity Problem

One of the books I read over the holidays was E.O. Wilson's Creation, a bestseller by the two time Pulitzer Prize winner that appeals to two opposing ways of thinking; religion and science to get together to save the biodiversity of the environment.  In this very well articulated book, he reminds us that in history (as captured by the fossil record) there has been 6 time periods where biodiversity has been vastly reduced, i.e. a lot of species have gone extinct.  The fifth was the end of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and in each case it took the world about 10 million years to rebuild, re-evolve that biodiversity.

Sadly, the sixth is happening now.  We humans are taking over the planet and creating mainly habitat loss for the other species.  Whatever we end up doing in twenty thousand years, it may take nature another 10 million years to recover.  It is sad, it is depressing, but it is what it is.  The book mentions all the hot spots in the word where species are especially endangered.  The rainforests of the Philippines, Madagascar and thr Amazon are among the worst ones.  But throughout the book I was waiting for the pragmatic bounding of the problem.  How much would it cost to fix it all?  If by a magic stroke every country chipped in, what would it take to preserve the forests, or help endangered species recover?

E.O. Wilson answers that question, and frankly the answer is just as depressing as the question.  He estimates that $30B annually is needed to preserve all the biodiversity on land.  That's it $30 billion dollars.  In the grand scheme of things that's tiny.

Compare that to the data on the link here on global defense spending.  I don't know if it is true but, is says that the world annually spends $1100B on defense.  That's $1.1 trillion dollars.  More than half of it is spent by the U.S., less than half is spent by the rest of the world.  And all it would take would be 3% of that spending to maintain biodiversity that nature needs 10 million years to recover.

I see now why some of my ecologist, biologist, ornithologist friends of mine are depressed about it.

Nonetheless, E.O. Wilson's Creation is a fantastic read, it's short, thoughtful and most importantly well-written.  You can get it it here.

Scared Kids?

Before we return to our regularly scheduled posts about the Internet and technology, I have to tell this interesting story, again about teaching science to children.  It's short and sweet.

Yesterday we were at The Exploratorium, which is a fun museum that teaches children about science.  It's one of my favorite places in San Francisco.  While there, I bought a few posters for the kids, one about volcanoes, one about The Elements, and one about the human body.  The human body one is the standard one you see at a doctors' office which shows the skeleton, the muscles around it and the organs etc.

When I pinned the human body poster to their wall on the hallway near their room, they all said that they are "scared of it" and want it put down immediately.  They were right, I can see why two 7 year olds might not want a skeleton, and a man with muscles exposed looking at them. (Flashback...when I was 8 I was given a "cute" poster of two little kittens.  The fact that I remember how they looked vividly should be enough to tell you it was scary). 

I told them again that we all have these muscles and organs but my explanations were no good.  They wanted nothing of this scary poster on their path between their room and the bathroom.  They said they would not sleep unless I took it down.  Instead, I told them, "take a post-it and cover every part that you think is scary, then as you grow up and get used to it, and are no longer scared, take them off."

To my surprise, they agreed, and covered almost the entire poster with post-its.  The skeleton was still there, but I guess the body with the exposed muscles and organs was the scary one.  They said "OK, now all the scary parts are covered" and they went to bed.

This morning I got up and saw them taking off the post-its.  That was a surprise.  I said "what's going on? I thought you were scared".  Their answer was: "we were but we got used to it and we are not scared any more"

That was that. 

Lesson of the story:  If explain something to kids they may or may not take it in, if you involve them, they learn.

UPDATE:  Chris Anderson posted this story and the pictures I took on Geekdad.  You can see the pictures there.