Quality of Life Index - a new statistic

Do you live in Vienna, Zurich, Geneva, Vancouver or Auckland? Be happy, your city is top 5 list of the quality of living ranking for cities worldwide!
According to the "Mercer's 2009 Quality of Living survey", Vienna won this annual competition, followed by Zurich, Geneva, Vancouver or Auckland. The quality of living rankings are based on a point-scoring index, which sees Vienna score 108.6, and Baghdad 14.4. Cities are ranked against New York as the base city with an index score of 100.
This survey covers 215 cities and is conducted to help governments and major companies place employees on international assignments. Moreover, this year’s ranking also identifies the cities with the best infrastructure based on electricity supply, water availability, telephone and mail services, public transport provision, traffic congestion and the range of international flights from local airports.

The following table (courtesy of Mercer) summarizes the top 5 cities afor the quality of living according to each world region :

Top 5 cities - Americas	Top 5 cities - Asia Pacific
Vancouver, Canada (tied 4th) Toronto, Canada (15th) Ottawa, Canada (16th) Montreal, Canada (22nd) Calgary, Canada (26th) The lowest ranking Americas city in the top 50 was Seattle (50th).	Auckland, New Zealand (tied 4th) Sydney, Australia (10th) Wellington, New Zealand (12th) Melbourne, Australia (18th) Perth, Australia (21st) The lowest ranking Asian city in the top 50 was Osaka (tied for 44th).

Top 5 cities - Europe	Top 5 cities - Middle East & Africa
Vienna, Austria ( 1st) Zurich, Switzerland (2nd) Geneva, Switzerland (3rd) Dusseldorf, Germany (6th) Munich, Germany (7th) The lowest ranking European city in the top 50 was Madrid (48th).	Dubai, United Arab Emirates (77th) Port Louis, Mauritius (82nd) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (84th) Cape Town, South Africa (87th) Port Elizabeth, South Africa (93rd) NB: There are no Middle Eastern or African cities in the top 50

How will be the future ?

During the year 1996 the Magazine Wired asked specialists not simply to predict innovations to come but also to tie them to a particular year, from 1996 to 2225 and beyond.
The predictions were pretty good, and some of them, happened even earlier than expected!
For instance, a Computer defeating human chess master, which were predicted to happen in 2005, happened 8 years before: IBM's Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov in 1997.

After thirteen years, they proposed the same experiments and here it is a list of these new predictions, till 2045 (for the full article see):

2017
Energy-efficient buildings

2018
Everything online
The meal-replacement patch

2019
Electro-sex

2020
Artificial intelligence
Humans visit Mars
Affordable genetic prophecy at birth

2021
First conflict based on global warming
Remote controlled surgery
Male birth control

2024
AIDS Vaccine
Microbial diesel provides most of our fuel

2026
Vertical city farms

2029
Lab-grown meat in fast-food restaurants
Intelligent advertising posters

2033
Live to over 100 with ease

2036
Freeze out death with cryogenics

2038
Meet ET

2045
Super-intelligence

I hope I will live enough to check all of them ;-)

Earth day

As it happened last year, I remind with a post that on the 22nd of April the Earth Day is celebrated.
This day is designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment. It was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in in 1970 and is celebrated in many countries every year.
The promoters organized themselves into a community (Earth Day Network), whose goals are:

• Promote Civic Engagement
• Broaden the Meaning of "Environment"
• Mobilize Communities
• Implement Groundbreaking Environmental Education Programs
• Help Bring Clean Water and Sanitation to the World
• Inspire and engage college students to become environmental leaders
• Support Earth Day Events and Actions around the World

As the Earth Day Network says "all people, regardless of race, gender, income, or geography, have a moral right to a healthy, sustainable environment!". We don't have to forget that!

Kill your TV - Can you turn off your TV for a week?

The "TV Turn Off Week" has been invented by David Burke, and it takes place just this week (April 20-26).
I found this idea really appealing, and when I read some facts about TV, I was astonished:

• Number of 30-second commercials seen in a year by an average child: 20,000
  
• Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children: 38.5
• Number of minutes per week that the average child watches television: 1,680
• Percentage of children ages 6-17 who have TV's in their bedrooms: 50
• Percentage of day care centres that use TV during a typical day: 70
• Hours per year the average American youth spends in school: 900 hours
• Hours per year the average American youth watches television: 1500
• Percentage of Americans that regularly watch television while eating dinner: 66

"American children and adolescents spend 22 to 28 hours per week viewing television, more than any other activity except sleeping. By the age of 70 they will have spent 7 to 10 years of their lives watching TV" (The Kaiser Family Foundation).

I think it's worth at least trying it! :)

Knowing, the movie - there is a pattern to predicting the future

I've recently seen a brand new movie with Nicolas Cage, Knowing.
The plot: In 1959, as part of the dedication ceremony for a new elementary school, a group of students is asked to draw pictures to be stored in a time capsule. But one mysterious girl fills her sheet of paper with rows of apparently random numbers instead. Fifty years later, a new generation of students examines the capsules contents and the girls cryptic message ends up in the hands of young Caleb Myles. But it is Calebs father, professor Ted Myles (Nicolas Cage), who makes the startling discovery that the encoded message predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years. As Ted further unravels the documents chilling secrets, he realizes the document foretells three additional events the last of which hints at destruction on a global scale and seems to somehow involve Ted and his son (If you want to know more, full synopsis can be found here... I don't like reveling the end of this film :)).

I quite liked the film. I think it may belong to the catastrophical movie series, and I could find some relations or some links to many other movies like "The day the earth stood still", "Deep Impact" and so on.

What I also noticed is that it may be even considered a film about data mining and forecasting! As matter of fact, Ted Myles analyses a very long sequence of numbers and find relevant patterns in it. That's exectly the aim of data mining. And being compiled in 1959 the list also represents forecasting for both the already happened disasters and for the not already happened ones.

Furthermore I realized that the choice of names is intentionally done: one of two only adult Israelites allowed to survive forty years wandering in the desert and enter Canaan is Caleb, as a reward for his faith in God. This is recorded in the Book of Numbers. Caleb is called "my servant" by God in Numbers 14:24, a position of the highest honor heretofore used only for Moses. Similarly, Abby, whose meaning is "father rejoiced, or father's joy" or "gives joy", reminds the intelligent, beautiful Abigail, who was Old Testament King David's third wife, described as "good in discretion and beautiful in form".
Other symbolic reference are likely hidden in the film, but I'm still working on that ;)

If you are interested in the trailer (where appears the sentence "there is a pattern to predicting the future"): http://knowing-themovie.com/

Scribd, download a book for free

Are you interested in the new book from J.K. Rowling, Ken Follett and many many others? Try Scribd!
This web site offers the possibility to download (for free!) books from a plenty of authors and the success is guaranteed. According to an article I read on the Times, about 55 Million persons visited this site! I briefly tried it and I was very surprised to find usually copyright protected books or scientific papers (such as those published by Springer Link).

Whether they are pirates, or pioneers I cannot say now. For sure, I believe that as it happened for music, a new battle will begin and this time it will be about books.

Update (02/04/2009):
The Scribd Team reacted to the article appeared on the Times, which I referred to. Therefore, just to complete the post, I add their answer below:

"Yesterday, The Times of London published an article claiming that various authors, including J.K. Rowling, were “fighting” Scribd over copyrighted material on our site. Unfortunately, the Times’ article was misleading and included factual errors that must be corrected.

1. To make it absolutely clear, J.K. Rowling and the other authors mentioned are not suing Scribd and have never filed a lawsuit against us.

2. Scribd takes the concerns of copyright holders very seriously. It’s why we created our industry-leading copyright management system, which goes above and beyond requirements set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Every time Scribd receives an official take down request from an author, publisher, or copyright holder, we remove the copyrighted document and add the reference file to our copyright database. If someone tries to upload a document that our system identifies as one of the tens of thousands of works in our copyright database, the document is automatically removed from Scribd. While the technology is not yet perfect, we are constantly working to improve it. And as our reference database grows over time, our system will become even smarter and faster.

3. Scribd is a document sharing site where people come to publish their grandmother’s 80-year-old pierogi recipe, to find Barack Obama’s latest economic plan, to read The New York Times’ official Madoff filing, to receive feedback on their new screenplay, and to reach a community of over 55 million readers.

Books are a small reason readers visit Scribd but growing thanks to our recent partnerships with leading publishing houses, including Simon & Schuster and Random House. (See: Scribd Publisher press release) These publishers and many authors are voluntarily giving us exclusive excerpts and full books because they see Scribd as a valuable way to get their works in front of tens of millions of readers. For a thoughtful and informed analysis of Scribd, here’s an Ars Technica post that presents a totally opposite take as The Times piece.

Also – our CEO is named Trip Adler, not Trip Adkins.

The Scribd Team"