MC Weekly Issue #10, Tuesday, February 21, 2006

“Now that we can do anything, what will we do?”

Welcome to Massive Change Weekly, an electronic newsletter sharing news about groundbreaking achievements in global design.

A few short blasts this week:

Researchers at Brigham Young University believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus. Current treatments can slow it down, but not eliminate it. Although so far limited to early test tube studies, CSA-54, one of a family of compounds called Ceragenins (or CSAs), mimics the disease-fighting characteristics of anti-microbial and anti-viral agents produced naturally by a healthy human immune system. http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_3482712

Further news on desalination: China recently announced that it will produce around up to one billion liters of of fresh water produced by desalination by 2010.

The space elevator reaches one mile. A space elevator is, for now, a hypothetical structure designed to transport material from the earth into space. Though there are many different proposals for doing this, they all share the same goal of replacing rocket propulsion with the traversal of a fixed structure similar to an elevator. LiftPort proposes doing this with a cable tether that would span from the earth’s surface to a point beyond geosynchronous orbit. As the earth rotates, the inertia at the end of the tether counteracts gravity and keeps the tether taut. Vehicles can then climb the tether and escape the planet’s gravity without the use of rockets. Such a structure could eventually permit delivery of great quantities of cargo and people to orbit, and at costs only a fraction of those associated with current means. LiftPort has now produced one mile of tether, with 61,999 miles to go to reach its target of being fully operational by 2018.

“You can change the reality of human history by systemic action.” - Bill Clinton The mission of the Clinton Global Initiative is a project of the William J. Clinton Foundation is to strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence. To advance this mission, the Foundation has developed programs and partnerships in the following areas:

Economic Empowerment; Health Security with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS; Racial, Ethnic and Religious Reconciliation; Education, Leadership Development and Citizen Service. http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org

In Toronto a remarkable new project is underway, a new social board game call GiftTRAP ( http://www.gifttrap.com ).

GiftTRAP is the brainchild of Jill Murray and Nick Kellet. Jill Murray was one of the co-authors of the Massive Change exhibit and here she is trying to continue to change and challenge the world.

GiftTRAP is the ultimate full engagement mental rollercoaster game of life, love, sofa shopping and soul searching.

This is a call for photo submissions. Photos and neat ‘gift’ ideas needed. If you submitted a photo for Massive Change that could be used as a gift please re-submit it for GiftTRAP at http://www.gifttrap.com.

“It’s a cool new social board game. It’s a game of giving and social awareness that is designed to create conversations. There are lots of echoes of Massive Change in it,” says Jill Murray, the creator of the Urban room in the Massive Change exhibit. “We have re-defined gift to include product, volunteering, experiences, acts of service, travel, education and all kinds of crazy things in between. It has been a blast working on GiftTRAP. The game is fun to play and a great answer to all those people who never know what to get someone. But my favourite part has been adding environmentally friendly, sustainable gifts into the mix as well as the idea of volunteering and giving back more to the world. It’s a new way to reach people and it’s not at all preachy.”

GiftTRAP need hundreds of digital images for the game, and that’s where you come in. Simply join and post your photos and they could be included in the game along with your name. They are looking for environmentally friendly gifts, sustainable gifts, neat ways to give back to the world as well as fun things like trips, boats, cars, houses etc. What is your perfect gift? The trip you took to China? Great. A new house? Super. The solar panels you installed? Wonderful. A Segway? Marvelous.

GiftTRAP also want to help charities gain more visibility so if you work at a charity or have a favourite not-for-profit please submit a gift idea and photo for them or pass this email on. If you own a product or a service you could see it featured in the game please submit that too.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 12th, 2006 at 10:56 pm and is filed under MC Weekly. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.