EYE OPENER

Theoretically….  Yeah right…

Washington, D.C.—Global meat production and consumption have increased rapidly in recent decades, with harmful effects on the environment and public health as well as on the economy, according to research done by Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project for Vital Signs Online. Worldwide meat production has tripled over the last four decades and increased 20 percent in just the last 10 years.

Implications:

• Large-scale meat production also has serious implications for the world’s climate
• Dirty, crowded conditions on factory farms can propagate sickness and disease 
• A diet high in red and processed meats can lead to a host of health problems, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

Put Into Perspective:

If global demand has increased in this area then it would be logical to assume that global demand has or will increase in other areas as well.  Why? 

London, 6th October, 2011: World-leading research company TNS has today unveiled the results of the biggest global study into the attitudes and investment priorities of the affluent - painting a timely picture of wealth, post global recession.

While the United States still ranks as the world’s most prosperous country, with 31m affluent households, the study reveals that the emerging economies of India and China have overtaken many European countries in this measure of consumer wealth.

Based on interviews with 12,000 people across 24 markets including China, Brazil and India, TNS’s Global Affluent Investor study shows that the growth of developing economic powerhouses is already starting to impact personal fortunes, among households with more than $100,000 investable assets.  Read more:  

Until very recently, the world of luxury remained the exclusive bastion of wealthy consumers from Western Europe, America, and Japan, who not only desired the best, but also possessed the cash to afford it. However, this well-heeled club now has some new members: millions of consumers from emerging markets. These freshly minted shoppers in Asia, Latin America, Russia, and the Middle East have greater levels of disposable income than ever before, making them a significant force in the global luxury market as they snap up iconic cars, haute couture, watches, leather goods, jewelry, fragrances, cosmetics, wines, spirits, and even specialized hotel services as a way to show off their wealth among their peers.    Read More...

Conclusions Drawn:

As global affluence increases so too will there be a corresponding increase in global demand.  As global demand increases there will be an increase in the scarcity of those products demanded and a corresponding increase in prices.  The global seller and their suppliers (not counting the middle men) will be the only ones that benefit.

However: 

theoretically, as demand increases, so too will supply according to the economic models (left) of the free market enterprise system; although, shortages would help explode prices.

The rest of us, you and I, will suffer…

Timeline:  

Probably in the next 7-10 years, maybe even in the next 3-5 years.

Global Awareness

Global Quality of

 Life

The term quality of life (QOL) references the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of living, which is based primarily on income. Instead, standard indicators of the quality of life include not only wealth and employment but also the built environment, physical and mental health, education, recreation and leisure time, and social belonging.

According to ecological economist Robert Costanza:

While Quality of Life (QOL) has long been an explicit or implicit policy goal, adequate definition and measurement have been elusive. Diverse "objective" and "subjective" indicators across a range of disciplines and scales, and recent work on subjective well-being (SWB) surveys and the psychology of happiness have spurred renewed interest.

Also frequently related are concepts such as freedom, human rights, and happiness. However, since happiness is subjective and difficult to measure, other measures are generally given priority.

It has also been shown that happiness, as much as it can be measured, does not necessarily increase correspondingly with the comfort that results from increasing income.

As a result, standard of living should not be taken to be a measure of happiness.   Also sometimes considered related is the concept of human security, though the latter may be considered at a more basic level and for all people.

The World’s Best Quality of Life

Every January in International Living’s monthly magazine, 194 countries are ranked to determine a list of the places that offer the best quality of life. This is not about best value, necessarily. It’s about the places in the world where the living is, simply put, great.

To produce this annual Index nine categories are considered:

1. Cost of Living
2. Culture and Leisure
3. Economy
4. Environment
5. Freedom
6. Health
7. Infrastructure
8. Safety and Risk
9. Climate

a list of the top 10 Quality of Life countries:

                                                                        Switzerland
                                                                        Germany
                                                                        United States
                                                                        Sweden
                                                                        Canada
                                                                        United Arab Emirates
                                                                        Denmark
                                                                        Norway
                                                                        Qatar
                                                                        Austria

For more information: 

http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp

For best places to retire:  

Annual Retirement Index 2013

Sweden

The Healthiest Places to Live

Experts say that the below factors are three times as important as your genetic m
akeup when it comes to enjoying a long and healthy life:

         Optimism and purpose

               a low stress level, a natural diet
         an active lifestyle

It’s easy to embrace those elements when you’re living in a place where they come naturally. And they do in our top picks for the world’s healthiest places to live.   Find out more here.

Switzerland

What is well-being?

It's a critical concept that is difficult to define or measure. Most of us know what makes us happy—whether material goods, family and friends, meaningful work, or something else—but many factors comprise our overall quality of life.

Germany

Researchers take varied approaches to quantifying quality of life, from simple calculations of money earned and food consumed to more subjective surveys. Many studies though find that human happiness depends on three key elements: good health, access to education, and relative wealth.

Insofar as wealth influences quality of life, there is one overarching global trend: The gap between rich and poor is growing. Consider that in the United States, the richest 20 percent of the population has grown more than 50 percent wealthier than society as a whole since the 1960s.

United Arab Emirates

In Asia, as economies have surged, millions are becoming wealthy, but hundreds of millions more remain in poverty.

And perhaps most strikingly, in 2007, the two richest people in the world had more money than the combined GDP of the 45 poorest countries. 

Global Awareness

     

There are twelve classical world religions. This is the list of religions described most often in surveys of the subject, and studied in World Religion classes (some of them more for historical rather than contemporary reasons):

Baha'i

Buddhism

Christianity

Confucianism

Hinduism

Islam

Jainism

Judaism

Shinto

Sikhism

Taoism

Zoroastrianism

The classical set of twelve is not necessarily the most accurate reflection of the present, real-world religious situation. (This fact is briefly addressed below.) We agree with the prominent comparative religion scholar Irving Hexham (an Evangelical Christian, and a professor at the University of Calgary) who wrote:

...there is an overemphasis on certain narrowly defined academic traditions in Religious Studies to the neglect of studies dealing with religion as it actually occurs in the world. In other words academics are happy to study other academics regardless of what is actually happening in everyday life. Thus, for example... I believe that the founder of [the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints], Joseph Smith, is a far more influential figure and deserves as much attention as the father of modern theology, Freidrich Schleiermacher, yet current textbooks and course offerings invariably mention Schleiermacher but rarely pay any attention to Joseph Smith. By recognizing the importance of living religions, popular piety and sociological studies I hope more balance will enter Religious Studies. [Source: Irving Hexham, Concise Dictionary of Religion, 1998.]  Read more…

   

Since the late 19th century, the demographics of religion have changed a great deal. On the one hand, since the 19th century, large areas of Sub-Saharan Africa have been converted to Christianity, and this area of the world has the highest population growth rate.

On the other hand, some countries with a historically large Christian population have experienced a significant decline in the numbers of professed active Christians: see demographics of atheism.

Symptoms of the decline in active participation in Christian religious life include declining recruitment for the priesthoodand monastic life, as well as diminishing attendance at church. In the realm of Western culture, there has been an increase in the number of people who identify themselves as secular humanists.

In many countries, such as the People's Republic of China, communist governments have discouraged religion, making it difficult to count the actual number of believers.

However, after the collapse of communism in numerous countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, religious life has been experiencing resurgence there, both in the form of traditional Eastern Christianity and particularly in the forms of Neopaganism and East Asian religions.

Studies conducted by the Pew Research Center have found that, generally, poorer nations had a larger proportion of citizens who found religion to be very important than richer nations, with the exceptions of the United States and Kuwait. 

IMAGINE

a song by John Lennon

Global Awareness

Global 

  

            Education

The World Economic Forum ranks the United States 52nd in the quality of mathematics and science education, and 5th (and declining) in overall global competitiveness [v]

The United States ranks 27th in developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving undergraduate degrees in science or engineering [vi]

There are more foreign students studying in U.S. graduate schools than the number of U.S. students [vii] and over 2/3 of the engineers who receive Ph.D.’s from United States universities are not United States citizens [viii]

Global Performance Ratings in Reading, Math, and Science, click here…

Global education is an education perspective which arises from the fact that contemporary people live and interact in an increasingly globalized world.

This makes it crucial for education to give learners the opportunity and competences to reflect and share their own point of view and role within a global, interconnected society, as well as to understand and discuss complex relationships of common social, ecological, political and economic issues, so as to derive new ways of thinking and acting.

However, global education should not be presented as an approach that we may all accept uncritically, since we already know there are dilemmas, tensions, doubts and different perceptions in an education process when dealing with global issues.

There are many definitions of global education. the Maastricht global education declaration (2002) states:

Global education is education that opens people’s eyes and minds to the realities of the globalized world and awakens them to bring about a world of greater justice, equity and Human Rights for all.

Global education is understood to encompass Development Education, Human Rights Education, Education for Sustainability, Education for Peace and Conflict Prevention and Intercultural Education; being the global dimension of Education for Citizenship.

Global education is about implementing the vision required to move to a model of partnership between peoples, cultures and religions at micro and macro levels.

Transformation learning through global education involves a deep, structural shift in the basic premises of thoughts, feelings and actions.

It is an education for the mind as well as for the heart. this implies a radical change towards inter-connections and creates possibilities for achieving more equality, social justice, understanding and cooperation among peoples.

Three main stages of transformation learning are strongly linked to global education:

            An analysis of the present world situation

             A vision of what alternatives to dominant models might look like
       A process of change towards responsible global citizenship

Global education as transformative learning implies participatory decision-making processes at all these stages. The goal of this kind of learning is to foster mutual knowledge and collective self-awareness.

Global education challenges greed, inequality and egocentric interests through cooperation and solidarity instead of dividing people through competition, conflict, fear and hatred.

Global education as transformation learning offers a way to make changes at local levels to influence the global in the sense of building citizenship through participatory strategies and methods, so that people learn by taking responsibilities that cannot be left only to governments and other decision makers.

Global education can contribute to the visioning process, but it can also play a role in the creation of new methods where social movements and non-formal learning processes are essential as they make room for values, issues and approaches not central to formal learning and give voice to all people, including the marginalized ones.

By shifting the focus onto the transformation from a culture of reproduction and dominance to one of partnership based on dialogue and cooperation, global education modifies established global economy rules by restoring human dignity as a central value.

Sounds ever so simple, 

doesn't it?

Global Awareness

GLOBAL

FIREPOWER

PWINDX is an acronym for Power Index and refers to an country’s ability to have superior firepower over the rest of the world.  PWINDX was developed by the CIA and is used by the US

to anticipate any current or future military threats to national security.

What the reader (chart below) should find most curious is the fact that by 2030 the US will rank second to China and 2050 will rank 3^rd behind China and India.

However, a lot can happen in 37 years…

And, with a very sluggish economy, our current wealth disparity, our current debt load, and an infrastructure that is badly in need of a face lift, I would suspect that Americans will be gradually experiencing a dramatic change in lifestyle.

 Most Powerful Nations at Given Years

The following is a list of the five most powerful nations at a specific year according to the Atlantic Council and the International Futures model.

R A N k	2 0 1 0	2 0 2 0	2 0 3 0	2 0 4 0	2 0 5 0	2 0 6 0
1	US	US	China	China	China	China
2	China	China	US	US	India	India
3	India	India	India	India	US	US
4	Japan	Japan	Japan	Japan	Brazil	Brazil
5	Germany	Germany	Brazil	Brazil	Japan	Japan

Firepower is the military capability to direct force at an enemy. It is not to be confused with the concept of rate of fire, which describes cycling of the firing mechanism in a weapon system. It involves the whole range of potential weapons. The concept is taught as one of the key principles of modern warfare wherein the enemy forces are destroyed or have their will to fight negated by sufficient and preferably overwhelming use of force as a result of combat operations.

Through the ages firepower has come to mean offensive power applied from a distance, thus a ranged weapon, as there is an immediate dissonance with the thought of one-on-one close quarters combat. 

Firepower is thus something employed to keep enemy forces at a range where they can be defeated in detail or sapped of the will to continue. For naval artillery, the weight of a broadside was long used as a figure of merit of a warship's firepower.

The earliest forms of warfare that might be called firepower were the slingers of ancient armies (a notable example being the biblical story of David), and archers. 

Eventually, the feared Huns employed the composite bow and light cavalry tactics to shower arrows on the enemy forces, a tactic that also appeared in a less mobile form in Britain, with its famed longbowmen, used during the various Anglo-French conflicts collectively known as the Hundred Years' War during the Middle Ages. 

The Battle of Crécy is often thought of as the beginning of the "age of firepower" in the west, where missile weapons enabled a small force to defeat a numerically superior enemy without the need for single combat.