Cancun Climate Change Conference - a little more detail

Following up my last blog post, I just briefly write what happened because some of the news I found and read don't seem to capture it.

During the first week, at the Plenary, when issues were raised, instead of being discussed there, consultation was done outside the Plenary. At the same time, at the Plenary, most of the delegates were just making their national statements.

Then on Saturday, at an informal Prenary, a document revising what had been worked on in order to give a guidance to prepare for the draft that was to be presented to the ministers for the high level discussion starting the following Tuesday. It was for transparency.

Then the following day, the president of COP/CMP (Patricia Espinosa), announced how they moved forward from that time on. She emphasized on transparency and inclusiveness. And in order to get ministers involved in early in the negotiations, she announced that she had asked ministers to work on each subject (such as Mitigation, Adaptation, Finance, etc.) as a pair, for example, the minister from Australia (a developed country) and the minister from Bangladesh (a developing country) to work together on the issue of Finance inviting all the delegates. She announced that ministers were not allowed to do political negotiations with other ministers and that they still leave the delegates to negotiate.

During those consultations lead by a pair of ministers for each subject, at the door of each meeting, the name plates of all the countries were placed, and all the countries were invited to join the consultations. So they were not closed-door behind-the-scene negotiations.

Informal Plenaries were held time to time to report the progress.

Then Thursday night, at an Informal Plenary, the ministers for each subject reported the progress, what had been agreed and the collected options for an issue that had not reached on agreement. Again, this was for transparency. Then the president announced that she would prepare draft documents based on the works so far. And she announced that they (the Parties) work through the night to work for it. And there would be another Informal Plenary at 8:30am on Friday, which was actually postponed because of the important negotiations going on (the president reported on Friday).

So throughout the process, all the Parties were able to participate and because the ministers lead the consultations for each subject, they made progress instead of delegates just not having a choice but stating their national positions.

Big contrast to Copenhagen, where many things were decided behind the door and pushed to the official Plenary. Multilateralism lead to a good result. Compromise was the key. And transparency and inclusiveness were assured throughout the process.

Cancun Climate Change Conference

It's not over yet.
But I would like to say that the president of COP16/CMP6 has done a great job. She coordinated and lead the conference toward a positive way.
At the beginning of the Informal meeting of the COP 16/CMP 6 President, resumed 2nd meeting, which is currently going on, the participants gave standing ovation to her.

Derecho de la madre tierra

I think that's what the president of Bolivia said, meaning the right of the mother earth.

Derecho de naturalesa

I think it means the right of the species - all the species on the planet have the right.

The president of Ecuador said it in Spanish at Cancun Climate Change Conference.
I listened to his speech in Spanish.

IT company Climate Leadership Ranking

Greenpeace International: Release of IT company Climate Leadership Ranking

It's interesting to know about Greenpeace's engagement in corporate space.

I am my connectome

The images of neurons give a different perspective.
They make me use this wonderful organ "brain" positively, even more.

The child-driven education

Fascinating.

How social networks predict epidemics

It was interesting to watch this talk.

What stops population growth?

This is what I understand for a long time about population growth. It's just that this video explains it visually very clearly.

What stops population growth? from Gapminder Foundation on Vimeo.

Ruby on Rails 3.0 is released

Rails 3.0: It's ready!

Ruby on Rails 3.0 Release Candidate 2 is released

It's getting closer to the final release.

Rails 3.0: Release candidate 2

How we found hundreds of potential Earth-like planets

Ruby 1.9.2 is released

Ruby 1.9.2 was released two days ago.
I don't know why I missed it for two days...

Population growth and sustainability

It was amazing.

Jason Clay: How big brands can help save biodiversity

A monkey economy as irrational as ours

It was interesting.

Ruby on Rails 3.0 Release Candidate is out

First thing first. I have to mention this.

Ruby on Rails 3.0 Release Candidate is out.

Soutenance au doctrat - c'était formidable

J'ai eu de la chance d'assister à la soutenance au doctorat à l'université.

Le candidat, les professeurs, les étudiants, les familles et les amies – tout le monde était très gentil et poli à moi. Je vous remercie tout le monde.

C'était une experience merveilleuse.

Cette soutenance me rappelait des souvenirs du temps ou j'était dans le domaine universitaire. Ça me manque beaucoup. Je voudrais y retourner.

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I had a chance to attend a doctoral defense at a university.

The candidate, the professors, the students, the families and friends, everybody was very kind and polite to me. I would like to express my appreciation to everybody.

It was a great experience.

This doctoral defense reminded me of the time when I was in academic. I miss it very much. I would like to go back there.

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大学の博士論文発表を見る機会に恵まれた。

発表者も、教授も、学生も、家族も、友人も、みんなとても親切で丁重だった。心から感謝している。

すばらしい経験だった。

学生だったころを思い出し、そのように考え、そのように話すことができたことを、本当に懐かしく思う。　できれば、戻りたいものだ。

Richard Feynman talks about light

Problem with restarting MySQL server installed through aptitude on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

I thought this would be useful for other people, too.

I would like to express my gratitude to the people who kindly answered my questions.

Problem with restarting MySQL server installed through aptitude on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

Butler and Duke - NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship

It was a great game - every minute of the game.

Installing Ruby 1.9.1 with Ruby Version Manager (RVM) on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

For some reason, Ruby 1.9.1 didn't install on my Mac OS X Snow Leopard because of an error:


Error running 'make ', please check /Users/home_dir/.rvm/log/ruby-1.9.1-p378/make*.log


The error in ~/.rvm/log/ruby-1.9.1-p378/make*.log:


compiling readline



readline.c: In function ‘username_completion_proc_call’:
readline.c:1159: error: ‘username_completion_function’ undeclared (first use in this function)
readline.c:1159: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
readline.c:1159: error: for each function it appears in.)
make[1]: *** [readline.o] Error 1
make: *** [mkmain.sh] Error 1


So compiling Ruby 1.9.1 with the default readline installed on Snow Leopard didn't work.

By looking at "rvm --help" or ~/.rvm/README, there is an option to specify custom configure options, i.e. -C|--configure. Also there is a flag to force ./configure on install even if Makefile already exists, i.e. --reconfigure.

So I installed readline with MacPorts and installed Ruby 1.9.1 with the option and the flag:


$ sudo port install readline

$ rvm install 1.9.1 --reconfigure --configure --with-readline-dir=/opt/local


Then installation succeeded.

One-to-many relationships in Tokyo Cabinet

I just posted what I tried:

how to build one to many rows in tokyo cabinet?