By Doug Grunther, CONTRIBUTING WRITER and Derek Osenenko, EXECUTIVE EDITOR While America’s fast-food industry may be hitting an earnings ceiling, it maintains its enormous grip on American eating habits and, despite the fast-emerging healthy-fast-food trend, continues to feed devastating health problems affecting growing segments of American society. Indeed, healthy alternatives to fast, cheap processed food are enjoying high-visibility campaigns designed...
Trendpost
While organic and whole-food movements have grown substantially over the last decade, the fast-food industry remains a behemoth (worth over $500 billion worldwide). It’s wreaking havoc on American health. Americans as a culture are addicted to government-supported quick fixes of factory-farmed meat, salt, sugar and chemical-laden food, with devastating results to health. Yet, despite anticipated expansion in foreign markets, growth...
The collaborative intelligence
The world has become so complex — from trying to feed 7 billion people to comprehending the exponential rise of computer intelligence in every aspect of our lives — that we no longer can count on heroic/brilliant individuals to solve these immense problems. From corporate boardrooms to educational forums to medical conferences, we see the rise of collaborative intelligence over...
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The natural intelligence emerging out of nature (such as swarm intelligence) has been around for eons. Human collaborative intelligence has been around for millennia. What makes the 21st century uniquely significant and complex is the addition of Enhanced Computer Intelligence. How these incredibly powerful, driving forces interact, and what “greater” intelligence might emerge, will determine the future. As we confront...
Ready for manufactured meat?
In September, China announced that it signed a deal to buy $300 million of meat from Israel. This raised eyebrows for two reasons. First, Israel isn’t known as the Pampas of the East; you don’t see vast hordes of beef cattle munching their way across grasslands in a country that’s 60 percent desert. Second, this meat will never set a...
Trendpost
Current methods of producing meat demand more land, water and feed than can be sustained to meet humanity’s increasing numbers and, with it, the demand for meat. “Clean meat” slashes the land, water and nutrition needed to make the world’s preferred source of protein while also easing people’s consciences about humane animal treatment. Factory meat will remain a curiosity until...
Send my daughter to China?
I had a very excited phone call from a family friend. She wanted to tell me about a wonderful opportunity. A new organization was offering to send Australian students to China to stay with families and help their children learn English. The organizer would pay airfares and all other trip costs. The first batch of 20 students already has headed...
Celente on China’s rise, America’s decline
Global forecaster Gerald Celente and his Trends Research Institute identified and have for years tracked the “Buy, Sell China” trend. While China has the world’s largest population, unlike the Made-in-USA multicultural label and pro-military-industrial-complex spending, China’s investors and its government seek innovation. Across the investment spectrum, China either drives innovation, especially in technology realms, or buys what it needs more...
Trendpost
Almost all Australian politicians rejoice in China being Australia’s biggest trading partner. They are happy to talk about China and free trade, but you won’t hear much from them about the lack of freedom in Tibet or anywhere else under China’s communist rule. The major political parties seem happy with the way things are. But the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize-winning...
Gaining on Alzheimer’s: A.I. to the rescue
As many as one in three elderly Americans develop Alzheimer’s Disease. But, until recently, there’s been no way to accurately predict the illness. That means that doctors couldn’t be sure which treatment to try. Now bioscientists at Italy’s University of Bari Aldo Moro have used artificial intelligence to pick out telltale hints of Alzheimer’s in brain scans. The researchers trained...