Daniel Lubetzky

Lev Grossman wrote an excellent article in TIME on how recommendation engines work (ie, for Netflix movie selection, and for Pandora radio selection) and how they can start turning us into boringly homogenous & predictive blockbuster consumers of the same stuff within one safe space.

Alas, when it comes to movie choices, the options and parameters are so many, that suggestions I get are often unreliable.

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Modern technology and education may not encourage creativity and imagination in children as much as the past.  Reading books makes you imagine your own characters, and blocks of wood – or pieces of nature – can prompt a child to imagine its toys. But tvs, xboxes, video games and pdas are less likely to stimulate the unknown, as they guide you through a pre-created and pre-imagined world.

Here is an article from babycenter (an informative and valuable website for parents) that shares ideas on how to tap your child’s natural curiosity.

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The OneVoice Movement has been running for the past couple years a program called Imagine 2018, where they are asking Israelis and Palestinians to share their vision of what their lives and future would look like if the conflict were to be resolved and a two state solution achieved.

OneVoice will soon be unveiling its next phase in the project – very promising stuff.

In the meantime, I just got a video from my friends Art Winter and Doug Suisman about their vision. In cooperation with the RAND Foundation, they have worked for several years on a Palestinian infrastructure corridor that includes state-of-the-art planning to enable a Palestinian state to prosper and grow in peace with Israel.  Their work is nothing short of stunning.

Take a look at their teaser video below, and visit their site here:

by Kim Walker on behalf of Daniel Lubetzky

Nick Kristof examines the dangers of chemicals that we encounter in our daily lives, and it’s scary. The last paragraph of his article offers valuable advice for parents aiming to secure their home from such dangers.

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by Kim Walker on behalf of Daniel Lubetzky

A recent study conducted by Dr. David Katz of Yale University proves once again that KIND bars are in fact as kind to your body as they are to your taste buds!

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by Kim Walker on behalf of Daniel Lubetzky

Here is an interesting chart from the Environmental Working Group of pesticide levels of a sampling of fruit and vegetables. The ones with high levels (low rank) should be bought organic.

I was intrigued by this very smart promotional give-away – a usb-drive that also serves as a livestrong-like bracelet.  Smart & practical idea…

We came to America for the American dream – to do good and to make good.

- K.R. Sridhar

(As quoted in a column by Tom Friedman in the NYT)

It is interesting that what we are witnessing right now is just simply the digitization of books formerly printed in paper.  For over 500 years, books have been written and conceived with Gutenberg’s guidelines in mind (Gutenberg is the inventor of the mechanical printing press). 

But since the advent of computers and now of the Internet, so many new possibilities have emerged – and yet the printed world has barely changed.  The advent of the Kindle, the iPad and other portable reading devices has so far simply resulted in turning analog print into digital print, while keeping the same linear prose format. 

If you stop to think about it, we are stuck in one model that, while beautiful and applicable for much good, is certainly not the only model to serve all potential needs that books can serve. 

Over the coming years, the whole way we think of e-books and just "books" will probably change.  One day it will not be "surprising" to read, within a book, interactive pictures and images akin to the ones you see in Harry Potter movies – those quirky 3D moving photos within the wizards’ magical newspapers. 

And it is also quite conceivable, indeed likely, that multimedia forms will reinvent how we do storytelling and how we provide information.  Why stick to just prose, or just music, or just newspaper, or just video? Why not create new models for information that combine elements of them all?

Why assume that a linear story is best? Why think that a book is necessarily different from a video-game? Someone will come up with a book that merges some elements of a game with different endings.  Analog examples already exist.  And digital multiple-choice endings already exist.  But we have not even begun exploring all the new possibilities presented by electronic "readers."

And why assume that a book needs to first be written and published, then read, then auctioned off to a Hollywood producer who then helps create a movie version of the movie? Someone will surely create a way to inform or entertain that combines elements of both – and more.

The potential for reinvention of the "book" is so far totally untapped.

If you haven’t seen the documentary Food Inc. – you have to.  Like Michael Pollan’s books, this movie will change the way you see food and the world.

If we as consumers and citizens don’t do something quickly to fight back against the food industrial complex, by voting with our dollars, by informing and educating others, and by advocating to the government for more transparency, freedom, and a level playing field for natural foods producers, then the epidemics of diabetes, obesity, environmental degradation, food contamination and inhumane treatment will threaten us further.

Some highlights:

• Chicken and meat processing is so inhumane, and scary, it makes you feel you can’t avoid but to become a vegetarian – unless you live near Joe Salatin
• The Food Industrial Complex is abusive, greedy, and scary;
• corn engineering has created high fructose corn syrup, and the corn lobby has resulted in subsidies for obesity-inducing products;
• Price distortion from government subsidies causes poor people to buy cheap unhealthy foods made up of corn-derived empty calories – contributing to diabetes and obesity;
• Otherwise herbivore cows that naturally should feed from grass are now primarily fed corn, causing e-coli contaminations and diseases;
• Chicken die from the fast weight they put on; and they are treated as tools in an industrial machine – no lives;
• Monstanto is evil. They hold a ruthless monopoly over soybeans.  They intimidate and sue farmers to use their genetically-modified seeds. Federal and state government agencies have been bought off and serve the interests of the food industrial complex.

Serious work ahead.