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Dan Pink, author of the “Whole New Mind,” says we have moved from the agricultural age (farmers), to the industrial age (factory workers), to the information age (knowledge workers), and now we are entering the conceptual age (creators and empathizers).
This is a fascinating topic. It has to do with the inclusion of Right-Directed Thinking to achieve social and economy progress in today’s world. A whole new mind is welcoming to Conceptual Age, and as a result, the necessity to develop new skills to confront it.
This change is forcing us to redesign products and services inspired on beauty, design, empathy, meaning and emotion. That’s why Right-Directed Thinking is emerging to revolutionize the concept of production; it is a powerful source to transform mundane products into objects of desire.
The Left-Directed Thinking, for its part, already managed lower costs, standardization and optimization, which Pink called abundance, Asia and automation. The ability to reason logically, sequentially, and speedily cannot work for its own anymore. The today’s market demands total satisfaction.
All forces now depend on each other. While Left-Direct mind leads us to an affordable consumption of goods and services, Right-Direct aptitudes help to add value on them.
Experts have statistically demonstrated that nuclear power could be supply electricity to the entire world. Nevertheless, there are tragic examples in which both the people and environment have been seriously affected by accidents. Until nuclear power is made safe, the world should stop using it –or at least stop building more nuclear plants.
Nuclear power has constituted a threat to humanity so far. The construction, manipulation and storage related to these plants have given rise to multiple tragedies. In 1957, in Russia’s Ural Mountains, some hundred miles from Moscow, buried nuclear waste exploded, killing more than 50 people. Almost 30 years later, in 1986, a worse disaster took place in Ukraine. In this incident, a large amount of radiation escaped from one of the reactors of Chernobyl Plant. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people suffered terrible injuries in their bodies. In the next years, many Ukrainians may die of cancers brought about by this accident. The accident at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI‑2) nuclear power plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979, was the most significant in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history. Dr. John Clearwater, a Canadian political scientist, recently revealed several incidents involving nuclear weapons in Canada wherein thousands were severely affected. Just about all the countries using nuclear energy have reported fatal and near-fatal accidents.
If victims do not die during or immediately after a nuclear accident, they will inevitably suffer consequences the years to come. The 442 global nuclear power plants manipulate four of the most dangerous elements in earth, which produce irreparable injuries in the human body, among them: cancer and genetic diseases. Lodine 131, which was released at nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the US, enters the human body via the gut and the lung. Then it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, inducing thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2000 children have presented cases of thyroid cancer. Strontium for instance, lasts for 600 years; it accumulates in the human breast during lactation, and in bone, where it can later generate breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia. Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, penetrates muscles and induces a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma. Plutonium 239, the most dangerous, is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver, leading to liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can also lead to bone cancer and blood malignancies. Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years transmitting genetic diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans.
But human beings are not the only victims. The ecosystem is one as well. In the US for instance, the enrichment of Uranium releases large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible, in part, for global warming and for 93% of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly in the US. The production and release of CFC gas is now banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it is mainly responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Nuclear power is not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors in the rest of the world consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year. These unregulated releases include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon. Their radioactive elements, which emit high-energy gamma radiation, mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm inducing genetic disease in any animal.
Nuclear power might be a helpful alternative in the face of an imminent shortage of electricity. However, we cannot afford the continued loss of innocent lives and destruction of our environment. The scientist community should firstly find ways to limit the dangers construction, manipulation and storage of this material before the use of nuclear power is resumed. Leaders around the globe, for their part, should keep striving to regulate programs adequately. When we are out of danger, the world may step forward.
Recently, we all saw when Obama ran into Hugo Chavez, the Venezuela’s President, at the Summit of the Americas in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, before leaders were ushered in for remarks. They apparently overcame some differences between them but lamentably it was just a formal act. From my viewpoint, I am quite convinced that Obama’s gesture was natural and genuine while Chavez’s was not. I affirm this based on many antecedents.
For many years, Colombians have received several attacks from the Venezuela’s President. Not only has he labeled our President Uribe as a rightist dictator but also has he accused him of violating human rights when defending our country from the FARC. Colombians know Uribe has acted according to the international agreements as well as we know Chavez uses to lie and to exaggerate anything. Additionally, he has generated tensions up to the point of freezing our commercial relationship and driving the Colombian Ambassador out of Caracas. Such decisions are usually made them when Colombia imposes its democracy over the communist system that both Venezuela and the FARC are intending to evangelize throughout Latinamerica. We ultimately fed up with Chavez.
Fortunately, this particular behavior is not unknown for Obama. He is representing democracy in such a way that he ignored the Chavez’s disguise to improve the relationship between them as Uribe also wanted some time. Colombia once procured to remedy a conflict cordially but Chavez let us down when he hypocritically shook the hands with our government, and two days after Chavez cowardly insult it again.
When a conflict has a pathological character such as Hugo Chavez, his opponent is at disadvantage because there is no objectivity to find common ground for negotiations. Obama administration will have to deal with several attacks and maybe threats from Venezuela. I do not pretend to put a damper on Americans diplomacy today’s results, I just want to warn them about this clown capable of lying at all of those who love democracy.
