The WWF have launched a report today (and more here) claiming that:

Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century... The report concluded that the global footprint exceeded the earth's biocapacity by 25% in 2003, which meant that the Earth could no longer keep up with the demands being placed upon it.

We're consuming resources faster than they're being replaced. So, we knew this. But hopefully we're getting to know it intimately.

This is a nice quote:

The cities, power plants and homes we build today will either lock society into damaging over-consumption beyond our lifetimes, or begin to propel this and future generations towards sustainable one planet living.

Two stories from the BBC, and one from the Guardian again. (Two Grauniad stories in one day - I'm not keeping up my resolve to appear online-literate by tendentiously seeking a wide array of sources... my Guardian-dependency is exposed!)

Aaanyway: Andy Evans, one of my supervisors and the Java tutor guy, posted this BBC news technology article about the use of Java to help medical professionals working in the third world monitor disease, as well as get vital info back, via their mobiles. (Since Java is multi-platform, running on virtual machines on whatever device you happen to be using.) Global position is part of the data transmitted, and so a picture of infection rates can quickly and cheaply emerge.

There's an hour and a half before my first Java practical, so let's see if I can't fit in a little lump of blog...

So! My gosh. First week of the Geography and Geographical Information Systems MA before the PhD. Tsk. Pff! Sampled all the modules I'm going to sample this semester. Beginning again - another little floating blob in a sea of Brownian-motion students all bouncing seemingly without purpose around the campus of Leeds Uni.

Done a first bit of reading in the Bodington Library - a smaller simulacra of the British Library, from what I remember of that. A damn fine place to read. Oh my God, libraries are wonderful things.

I hope I always remember to go there and work sometimes. Libraries are wonderful things; librarians, as in Michael Moore's book, noble defenders of knowledge. (Think really bad swords and sorcerors film staring an entire cast of magic-wielding, and probably scantily clad & nubile defenders of knowledge. Wearing glasses. The only force standing between the total blackness of oblivion and the light of our accumulated wisdom. I worry about me sometimes.) Students - ants re-creating that knowledge, altering it, giving up our puny little minds to act as agents of its evolution.

Had a day of thinking about the meaning of it all. Just been trying to find a Spinoza quote; failed but got this from Einstein:

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.

This isn't something I'm entirely comfortable writing about, because people either think you're a loony, or people who don't are loonies. But anyhoo here's what's been vexing me.

Kauffman argues in At home in the Universe that the laws of complexity can account for the emergence of life. On the mathematical boundary between chaos and order, the structures that life is built on appear. "We, the expected" - mathematics working through auto-catalytic loops.

On the way out of the Big Green Gathering on a shuttle bus (driven by a calm bearded man in shades and pink tutu), the impromptu bus-stop off the site had a little book-stall, and I bought Permaculture in a Nutshell. I've been eyeing up permaculture for a while. If you had a venn diagram of new-age nonsense and solid propositions that might make a difference, this is one of those that'd be in both camps - because of its reputation rather than its proximity to crystals. (Co-housing has a similar problem. "No, really, its effective, and has sound reasons for being so - just because some of the residents hang dream-catchers on their porches doesn't mean it's no good...!")