Monday Mailing
Year 22 • Issue 10 23 November 2015 1. Oregon Tech’s Outpost Economy: Feeding or Stunting the Silicon Forest? 2. Endangered Species List: Wolves De-Listed in Oregon 3. More Marijuana Retail Shops Exist In Oregon, Outnumbering Starbucks or McDonald's 4. New Web Resources From Natural Hazards Center 5. New Farmers Digital Toolkit 6. Active Transportation Summit Request for Proposals Open through November 30 7. Building for Resilience Makes (Good Business) Sense 8. Steve Duin: The Coolest Maps of Portland You've Ever Seen 9. Got Food? How Local Food Systems Can Build Resilience for Turbulent Times 10. Bobble’s Fake Water Brand Brilliantly Spoofs Millennial Advertising Cliches 11. These Are Some of the Most Amazing Views of Earth You’ll Ever See 1. Oregon Tech’s Outpost Economy: Feeding or Stunting the Silicon Forest? Google and Yahoo. IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Dell. Xerox. Apple and Microsoft. Intel, of course. And now Amazon.
Quote of the Week: “The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own.” ~ Disraeli Oregon Fast Fact: The State of Oregon has one city named Sisters and another called Brothers. Sisters got its name from a nearby trio of peaks in the Cascade Mountains known as the Three Sisters. Brothers was named as a counterpart to Sisters.
Nearly all the biggest names in technology have footholds in the Portland area. What Portland doesn't have is a single big-name tech company of its own. This isn't new. The Silicon Forest began to transform into an outpost economy in the 1970s, when Hewlett-Packard Co. and Intel established manufacturing sites in Oregon, and Tektronix began to peak. What is new is a flurry of deals, this year and last, that put out-of-state owners in charge of Oregon companies. That has the tech community and state economists engaged in a fresh debate about whether the outpost economy is feeding Oregon's tech ecosystem, or stunting it. To access the full story, click here. 2. Endangered Species List: Wolves De-Listed in Oregon Wolves have been knocked off the Endangered Species List in Oregon, although the state's Department of Fish & Wildlife says that management of wolves will not change. This followed an earlier decision by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission to remove wolves from the list, according to a statement. The state agencies will still follow Oregon's Wolf Plan's specific guidelines, which were drawn up in 2005 and updated in 2010. For instance, hunters and trappers may still not take wolves; and non-lethal preventive measures are still advocated under the Plan for farmers, Page 1 of 5
ranchers and others trying to preserve their stock from wolves, as the release noted. Also, the gray wolf remains listed on the federal Endangered Species Act west of Highways 395, 78 and 95, and they are regulated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. To access the full story, click here. 3. More Marijuana Retail Shops Exist In Oregon, Outnumbering Starbucks or McDonald's After the state of Oregon legalized recreational marijuana last month, the Oregon's Health Authority (via Zero Hedge) reports that there are now more retail marijuana shops than Starbucks hops or McDonald's stores existing in the region. Zero Hedge, in its report, said that the marijuana industry in the state of Oregon is growing much faster than in Colorado or in Washington. When medical marijuana was legalized in Oregon (but before recreational pot was legalized), a total of 281 marijuana businesses opened and classified as medical dispensaries. These stores, immediately after the recreational marijuana was legalized in the same state, reclassified themselves as retail shops. The number of marijuana retail shops in Oregon have ballooned such that it already have outnumbered the number of Starbucks or McDonalds store in the state. Starbucks only has 248 existing stores in Oregon while McDonalds have 205 locations. This shows that marijuana is quickly becoming an important part of the economy and pop culture. To access the full story, click here. 4. New Web Resources From Natural Hazards Center When Nature Strikes: The Science of Natural Hazards Whether you’ve been charged with explaining volcanoes to sixth-graders or want to get up to speed on the ins-and-outs of space weather, these short, informative videos are just the thing. Produced by NBC Learn, with the help of the National Science Foundation and the Weather Channel, the When Nature Strikes collections gives an easy-to-understand glimpse of the science behind hazards that range from wildfire and flash floods to earthquakes and hurricanes.
Youth-Led Advocacy for Disaster Risk Reduction: A Guide
When it comes to working to reduce disaster risks, it’s hard to beat the energy and enthusiasm of a community’s youth. Now Y Care International has published a guide to help those working in DRR create and manage advocacy activities for children and youths. The guide offers coded, easy-to-use ideas for key points to consider when planning activities, tips for creating groups and action plans, and series of tasks to take kids from planning to full-scale involvement. Measuring the State of Disaster Philanthropy Anyone wondering how disaster donations are spent will appreciate this interactive Web site that allows users to look at donation data in a number of ways. Visitors can use the site, which was created by the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, to see where donations are spent, what types of disasters are funded (including by who and to what degree), and even learn what strategies are best supported. And if that’s not enough great info for you, a companion site allows users to take a similar look from a mapped perspective. States at Risk: America’s Preparedness Report Card If you’re wondering where your state stands on preparedness for the ravages of climate change, wonder no more. This new report from Climate Central and ICF International will tell you who’s Page 2 of 5
making the grade—and who’s not—on issues such as drought, extreme heat, wildfires, and floods. A nifty map feature, summary report, and the ability to view findings by threat or state make sure you can get the info you need quickly. Association of Healthcare Emergency Preparedness Professionals This newly minted professional organization promises to provide networking, education, and leadership opportunities to professionals in the healthcare emergency preparedness field. Check out their Web site for resources, job postings, and upcoming events. To access the photo series, click here. 5. New Farmers Digital Toolkit Farming is a tough job, but at the heart of it all, there’s a vibrant community contributing to the future of our nation’s health and food security. Now USDA has a new tool to help you find the resources you need to get started or to build up your farming operations. The site features tips for farmers on getting started and opportunities just for you. You can browse the site or use our Discovery Tool to tailor your experience by answering a few questions in order to get back personalized resources to meet your needs. To access the toolkit, click here. 6. Active Transportation Summit Request for Proposals Open through November 30 We want to learn from you: Oregon Active Transportation Summit Request for Proposals is open through November 30.
Do you have a story to tell in a six minute Pecha Kucha slide show? Is there a dream team panel you'd like to hear wrestle with a key topic in transportation, recreation, and health? Is there emerging research you think all transportation professionals should know about?
Help us spread the word that the request for proposals to shape the 2016 Summit is open through November 30! The 2016 Active Transportation Summit March 14 & 15 - Portland, OR Registration opens in January. Join us for the 2016 Oregon Active Transportation Summit, two days of inspiring mobile workshops, plenaries, professional training, and networking with innovators, thought leaders, and passionate professionals from the Pacific Northwest. If you are a professional, policy maker, or advocate working in the fields of transportation planning and engineering, community development, transportation justice, recreation and tourism, or public health, this event is for you! To submit a proposal, click here. 7. Building for Resilience Makes (Good Business) Sense Katrina. Sandy. Joaquin. Patricia. If it seems to you that weather-related disasters are on the rise, you're not mistaken: the number of such disasters in North America has nearly quintupled since 1980. That's because a changing climate brings more extreme weather, and because more people and property are in harm's way than ever before. Page 3 of 5
These disasters—from drought and wildfires to hurricanes and flooding—are spurring forwardthinking architects and developers to "build for resilience." A new report from the Urban Land Institute (ULI) shows that building for resilience makes sense for people, for the planet—and for the bottom line. Building for resilience means following emerging best practices in land use, design, and construction to protect buildings—and their inhabitants—from climate risks. The ULI report, Returns on Resilience: The Business Case offers ten case studies of projects that have adopted this approach. To access the full story, click here. 8. Steve Duin: The Coolest Maps of Portland You've Ever Seen The Portland State University foursome arrived mid-morning Friday at Southeast Stark and Cesar Chavez, then headed west, toward Lone Fir Cemetery, the river and a better feel for the neighborhood. They walked, slowly, searching for what is rarely visible from the inside of a car or the dark side of an iPhone. They charted each splash of graffiti and cramped garage, the horse rings and razor wire, the buildings that welcomed you to Stark Street and those that ordered you to move along. And they were guided, each step of the way, by Hunter Shobe, his new book, and his belief that we have unique ways to illustrate the city's enduring and evolving space. An associate professor of geography at Portland State, Shobe is the co-author, with David Banis, of "Portlandness: A Cultural Atlas." To access the full story, click here. 9. Got Food? How Local Food Systems Can Build Resilience for Turbulent Times Consider, for a moment, that lettuce leaf on your plate. It probably traveled a long way to get there— about 1,500 miles, on average.1 In fact, your dinner has probably seen more of the world than you have: the average American meal contains ingredients from at least five countries outside the United States. The complex, globalized system that puts food on our plates is a technical and logistical marvel, delivering unprecedented quantities of food at historically low prices. But that system is surprisingly fragile. Its globe-spanning supply chains are easily disrupted and its vast monocultures are vulnerable to drought and disease. And, because the system is entirely dependent on fossil fuels, it is subject to the shortages and price swings that afflict those commodities. To access the full story, click here. 10. Bobble’s Fake Water Brand Brilliantly Spoofs Millennial Advertising Cliches If you watch enough advertising aimed at anyone aged 14 to 30, certain patterns of tone, image, and style emerge. Young people, just livin' the good life, embracing the moment, seizing the day and all that. To draw attention to the huge amount of waste created by single-use plastic water bottles,
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reusable bottle brand Bobble has tapped all these well-tread commercial cliches to reach the exact same audience. Created by 72andSunny New York, the spot features beautiful young people doing all kinds of fun things, but cheekily veers into the ridiculous with a fake water brand called Once. As in, the plastic bottle is used once. It's a smart take, using familiar imagery but with a wink-wink savvy that lets viewers in on the inside joke. "You get it, right?" the spot seems to be saying, positioning the Seventh Generation bottle brand as the smarter, cooler choice to the Poland Spring and Dasani crowd. To access the full story, click here. 11. These Are Some of the Most Amazing Views of Earth You’ll Ever See I have looked at a lot of different views of Earth from space — taken by astronauts, satellites and other spacecraft — so I was not expecting to be all that impressed by the images collected into a new book called Earth from Space. But I was very wrong. There are a few of the familiar shots that even many people who aren’t obsessed with this kind of imagery may recognize, like deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon, the wild growth of urban Las Vegas and the creeping shrink of glaciers. But there are so many more of places I had never seen: mangroves in the Gulf of Bengal, pre-and-post disaster Chernobyl, shrimp farms in Vietnam, an extinct volcano in Algeria, and lots more. The book has 150 images, and it was really hard to choose just 12 to show you (the publisher Abrams was very generous and let me choose the images, but wisely drew the line when I told them I had 40 favorites). The author, Yann Arthus-Bertrand (an environmental activist who also published the book Earth from Above), arranged the scenes into themes including pollution, desertification, urban sprawl, farming and natural disasters. Often, trying to support themes with imagery requires including images that may be relevant and descriptive but aren’t also beautiful. Not so here. I’ll admit I didn’t read much of the text, which includes captions and interviews with activists, scientists and other experts. I was too busy admiring the Earth. If you have read this far, it’s time for you to stop and check out a few of the amazing images in this book. To access the photo series, click here.
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