It doesn’t matter whether you hate the spies and believe they are corroding democracy, or if you think they are the noble…

“It doesn’t matter whether you hate the spies and believe they are corroding democracy, or if you think they are the noble guardians of the state. In both cases the assumption is that the secret agents know more than we do. But the strange fact is that often when you look into the history of spies what you discover is something very different. It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.”

–http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER

The Future Of Food, Mapped Out For The Next 10 Years

food, futures, future of food, IFTF

For the appetizer, the long table of guests shared bowls of seasonal salad from Graze the Roof, a vegetable garden located on the roof of Glide Memorial Church. The main course was a frittata with onions (served in a compostable box) from Sprig, a new dining-on-demand service founded by Nate Keller, Google’s former executive chef. Dessert consisted of lemon curd mousse with strawberries and mint, prepared with Nomiku, which bills itself as the first immersion circulator made for home cooks. These dishes have little in common, except for one thing: They all provide hints of our collective food future, as imagined by the Institute for the Future, which collaborated with Nomiku and Suppershare to put on the dinner.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3033762/the-future-of-food-mapped-out-for-the-next–10-years

IFTF: Global Food Outlook

food, food futures, IFTF, futures

The Global Food Outlook Program’s research and forecasts explore the tensions and possibilities of food futures, from people’s everyday food habits and choices, to the dynamics of global food markets, to the complex environmental issues that sustain food production. For seven years, we’ve worked with organizations and the public to bring systematic futures thinking to food system efforts around the world. Our long-term view encompasses multiple scales, levels of uncertainty, and radically different possible futures. We develop foresight to help others develop insight and take action toward impactful, transformative, resilient change.

http://www.iftf.org/foodfutures/

Goodbye to the Godfather of Psychedelics

sasha shulgin, psychedelics, obituary, chemists, alchemy

“Sasha’s work is by all objective criteria worthy of the very highest academic honors, Nobel Prize kind of stuff, but such honors are impossible as we struggle as a society to learn how to balance the complexities that are stirred up by the power of psychedelics,” said UC Berkeley neurobiology lecturer David Presti during the hour-long memorial service. “It was too big to be done in a multimillion dollar laboratory. It instead required an alchemist’s den, a courageous spirit, a careful focus of intention, and a goodly dose of mystical insight. Then the stuff of legend happened. Thank you, Sasha.”

http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2014–08–04/goodbye-godfather-psychedelics-sasha-shulgin-now-tripping

An expanded set of fundamental surface temperature records

science, climate, weather, data, temperature, ISTI, forecast, open, surface temperature, climate cha

Version 1.0.0 of the Global Land Surface Databank has been released and data are provided from a primary ftp site hosted by the Global Observing Systems Information Center (GOSIC) and World Data Center A at NOAA NCDC. The Stage Three dataset has multiple formats, including a format approved by ISTI, a format similar to GHCN-M, and netCDF files adhering to the Climate and Forecast (CF) convention. The data holding is version controlled and will be updated frequently in response to newly discovered data sources and user comments. All processing code is provided, for openness and transparency. Users are encouraged to experiment with the techniques used in these algorithms. The programs are designed to be modular, so that individuals have the option to develop and implement other methods that may be more robust than described here. We will remain open to releases of new versions should such techniques be constructed and verified.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/07/release-of-the-international-surface-temperature-initiatives-istis-global-land-surface-databank-an-expanded-set-of-fundamental-surface-temperature-records/,+science