Pareto

Pareto is my new years resolution. A mentor mentioned it over the course of a discussion on my ability to get work (or not get work) and where to focus. Pareto principle, known as the 80-20 rule, states that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. As I participate in the ponderous new economy, it serves as a efficient method and reminder to prioritize to achieve a level of success.

A case in point, is supplying glasses for the worlds poor. Some put the estimate as high as two billion who do not have corrective lenses that would allow them to lead better, more productive lives. Now efforts are under way to find a means of distributing inexpensive glasses on a wide scale. One promising technology is self adjustable lenses, that untrained wearers can set the right focus themselves in less than a minute, reducing the need for trained optometrists, who are rarely available in many parts of the world. Though these adjustable glasses cannot yet help conditions like astigmatism, at least 80 percent of refractive errors can be fixed. Ergo Pareto!!!

Fake Real...

I recently visited the new Platinum-level LEED certified Academy of Sciences Natural History Museum and Steinhart Aquarium building, designed by Renzo Piano in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. It is purported to be the worlds "greenest" museum. From radiant heat to bike racks to photo voltaic cells, it is all but painted green. Nothing $500,000,000 can't buy. Really, its a wondrous structure combining divergent activities- museum, aquarium, planetarium, zoo, restaurants, shops and so on. What bothered me though, is the underlying environment didn't seem to to be satisfactory to any of the nature that have to live there. From the big albino crock to the lightest butterfly, all still run into a net or high wall and know it. The beasts with gills circle the perimeter in search for that ever elusive cove to the way out. Only the taxidermy animals at best(above) look to be at peace.

A year ago I chaperoned a middle school group of immigrant students to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. I had never been there after all these years here. I quickly understood why, because those animals in my mind, know better about the boundaries they are given. In this time of fantastical internet and media along with capacity to include the disenfranchised into nature better than any other time in memory, why do we continue to house the wild as a means to explain it? I was struck by the kids too, who also seem to see the resignation in the Sloth's as they lumbered about their "habitat". The one twinkle in the eye that struck out was the tall girl as she noticed the Giraffe's and turned, "we eat those where I come from..."