Vertical farms and birthrights

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIdP00u2KRA

 I started watching this talk because it is about vertical farms, but the speaker, Dickson Despommier, spends a lot of time explaining what the problems we face as a planet are, leaving less for detail on vertical farms, which for him are part of the solution.

This doesn't detract from the talk overall, though if you're more interested in vertical farms in a technical way, you may need to look elsewhere, or follow up the sources used in the talk.

The main thing I took away from the talk is Despommier's bottom line, or sine qua non, or key aim that there should be adequate water and nutrition for every human being as a birthright (ie not something that you have to work for, nor something which is granted to you by a government or other person or institution). Also, he actually quantifies 'adequate' as being 2.3 litres of fresh water and 1500 calories in food per person per day. I have no means to challenge these quantities, nor reason to doubt them, but having even a working estimate enables calculations to be done and gives clarity for planning purposes over and above the more nebulous/subjective "adequate".

Education

The subject of over-subscribed schools came up in conversation, followed swiftly by what makes a good school. I'm not going to spell out my entire thought process here, but just conclude what education would be like in an RBE.

At the moment good educators and good leaders of educators have an incentive to apply their skills in a comparatively small context. That incentive is of course money. In a sane world, the best educators and educational materials would be deployed as widely as possible so that the maximum number of people could benefit from them. Ted Talks and the Khan academy are two institutions that subscribe to his philosophy and act upon it, but there are many others.

If good education is channeled through a certain institution in a certain place, by certain people at a certain time, of course the availability is limited and - behold - competition for access to that education arises. In schools, admissions criteria are applied. In the state sector, the crow-flies distance from home to school is often used, causing people to try to live near the 'good' schools.

One element of a school that makes it good is its ethos. This is an abstract concept, and there should be no difficulty in school A  having the same ethos as school B. Another characteristic is leadership. To improve education generally in this attribute the leadership needs to be scaleable.

... to be continued (maybe)