Category Archives: New Utopia

A lot of people think about smart cities and they think about flying cars, and stuff like that. We believe that cities wont fundamentally look different in the next 10 years, but cities will be a lot more efficiently managed

Jenny McGrath Correspondent Your city is dumb. The potholed streets, coin-operated parking meters, and drafty brick buildings many of us interact with every day havent changed much in a century. But its finally happening.

From Oslo to San Diego, cities across the globe are installing technology to gather data in the hopes of saving money, becoming cleaner, reducing traffic, and improving urban life.

In Digital Trends Smart Cities series, well examine how smart cities deal with everything from energy management, to disaster preparedness, to public safety, and what it all means for you. What is a smart city? Not even the people building them seem to know yet.

Get 10 people in a room and ask what a smart city is, youll get 11 answers, Bob Bennett, Kansas City, Missouris chief innovation officer, told Digital Trends. That might be true, but most involved in smart city projects agree on one thing: No ones really there yet. I think its the Wild West at this point, and smart cities mean something different to everybody, said Jarrett Wendt, executive vice president of strategic innovations at Panasonic.

When asked for examples of smart cities (these are our four favourite smart cities, Bennett instead gave examples of smart silos: areas where certain cities are particularly thriving, though they may not tie into a bigger picture. Washington D.C. has great water analytics. Seattle is doing a lot right when it comes to environmental initiatives.

San Diego has thousands of smart streetlights. Songdo, in South Korea, had the benefit of being built from the ground up as a smart city. Many of its lessons cant necessarily be applied to cities trying to work with existing infrastructure.

Data sharing is crucial

Better parking, efficient lighting, improved traffic flow, smarter security, improved waste management, and disaster planning are all areas where technology can make an impact. The biggest problems with these technologies, said Munish Khetrapal, managing director of Ciscos smarter cities and IoT department, theres a lot of fragmentation . . . You need a way to connect all these different standards and bring them all in a common, unified platform.

You need a way to connect all these different standards and bring them all in a common, unified platform.

Having access to the data from for example your environmental sensors and connected trash bins is the first step; making sense of it is the next. But sharing that data and analysis is just as crucial.

Arvind Satyam, Ciscos managing director of smart cities and digitisation division, gives the example of waste management and traffic departments working together. If the trucks are only picking up the bins that are, say, 70 percent full and above, the traffic management agency can use its real-time information to route them in the most efficient way.

There is a reason every city has their own challenges, said Blake Miller of Think Big Partners, a start-up partnered with Cisco thats working on making Kansas City smarter. Every city may have crime and congestion, but think about the weather differences between San Diego and Denver or the potential natural disasters facing Seattle and Kansas City.

Looking at neighbouring cities

Yet even if they have different problems, CIOs and mayors should still be looking at their neighbours and beyond what Sara Gardner, Hitachis CTO calls looking sideways to see whats working and whats not. In Europe, 56 cities built their own bad variations of the same service complained Sascha Haselmayer, CEO of Citymart, in Anthony Townsends book Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. Some cities have tried to involve citizens, promoting contests for residents to build apps.

The problem tends to be that geeks will build apps for getting bicycle directions, theyll build apps for finding cocktail and coffee specials, not the kinds of things that working mothers need, Townsend told CityLab. Ignoring these populations has dire consequences.

In Columbus, Ohios South Linden neighbourhood, the infant mortality rate was twice that of New York City. Without reliable transportation, its hard to make pre and postnatal appointments, said Vinn White, former deputy secretary at the US Department of Transportation (USDOT), during a panel at Smart Cities Week (SCW) in Santa Clara. To win the 2015 Smart City Challenge proposal, the city suggested developing an on-demand ride service for pregnant women.

A lot of people think about smart cities and they think about flying cars and futuristic skyscrapers and stuff like that.

In order for cities to begin on the right track to becoming smarter, many stars need to align. The biggest factor is having leaders who are on board. Satyam cites Barcelona as a prime example; five years ago, he said, the government that was in place was not only willing to embrace technology but get different departments working together. Its not just about being smart in individual verticals, its about tying all these verticals together, he said. When a city has a strategic goal in mind becoming carbon neutral, like Copenhagen, for example it requires collaboration across the board.

Cities are big, huge moving ships that dont move very quickly, said Miller. Trying to rig everything together could mean that by the time everythings in place, your brand new technology is on its way to becoming obsolete. For a city with incredibly tight budgets, said Bennett, theres little room for failure.

Red tape can kill innovation

Sometimes funding isnt the issue. Procurement is a nightmare, said Charles Brennan, CIO of Philadelphia, during a SCW panel. I have less trouble getting money than I have spending it. A start-up may want to work with a city but might struggle to fill out 30-to-40-page forms required for consideration. City ordinances that havent kept pace with technology can also pose a problem.

Austin, Texas was looking at installing smart kiosks around the city. According to the ordinance, this smart kiosk is a sign, said Ted Lehr, an IT data architect with the city. Its the only thing we can label it as.

During the same SCW panel, he mentioned there might be pushback from the public with some of these initiatives. While Singapore or Dubai might unilaterally decide to implement technology, we are doing it in a way that has to engage our public, he said. Meanwhile, even cities with deep tech talent pools to draw from can come up short.

Its hard for government to compete with the private sector, said Kevin Burns, CIO of Miami. A few panellists suggested appealing to Millennials civic pride and desire to make a difference to get them to accept lower-paying jobs within the government.

Building new infrastructure

In addition to outdated infrastructure, cities that arent starting from the ground up have inefficient buildings to incorporate into the picture. Its not actually the age of building, its the age of infrastructure, Scott McCormick, vice president of sales and business development for BuildingIQ, told Digital Trends in 2015 at a conference about San Joses future. The company uses analytics to double the efficiency of HVAC systems, as long as theyre not more than 40 years old. For newer buildings, the possibilities of smart buildings go beyond energy management.

The tenant, customer, and visitor experience is all integrated with the technology, and then all the back building facilities management is integrated as well, Eric Simone, CEO of ClearBlade, told Digital Trends.Every city has its own challenges.

That means a command centre could give a building manager a picture of the HVAC system, lighting, security, and more. The heating and cooling could adjust based on the position of the sun. Visitors could have their faces scanned for security purposes, instead of having to check in at a desk. Theyd get a notification on their phone, directing them to the proper elevator bank to get to their meeting. Sensors on windows, appliances, and elevators could help vendors and service people provide predictive maintenance fixing a problem almost before it starts.

In an emergency, buildings could also communicate to provide crucial information. The problem is for a project like this, for any big building, youre going to have 47 different vendor platforms you now have to look at, said Simone, who added that ClearBlade is the open, neutral platform that can tie it all together.

These smart buildings are closer than you may think. The company is working on a project that should have its smart buildings up and running in three or four years. Its a lot easier to implement IoT on a building level than a city level, he said.

The problem of security

Another element for cities to keep in mind is security. In April, Dallas sirens started blaring in the middle of the night, the result of a cyber-attack. Much more disruptive and dangerous would be if control of a hydroelectric dam fell into the wrong hands, for example. Another concern is creating or worsening a digital divide, where parts of a city are left without access to the same technology even something as simple as internet access as the rest of the city.

Cities such as Kansas City are trying to close those gaps, but its not going to happen overnight. In 10 years, though cities could operate differently but its not as if theyll be unrecognisable. It wont look like Minority Report and it wont look like The Fifth Element, said Satyam. A lot of people think about smart cities and they think about flying cars, and stuff like that. We believe that cities wont fundamentally look different in the next 10 years, but cities will be a lot more efficiently managed.

That definitely sounds less cool (and less Big Brother-ey) but it could look something like this: Youre driving down the road, and theres fog ahead. If the fog is backing up traffic really badly, your car will reroute you, but if its just reducing visibility, your car will automatically slow down and turn on the fog lights.

Khetrapal sees a good outcome for smart cities that operate like this: How can the city adapt and respond to the citizen, versus how the citizen adapt and respond to the city? Digitaltrends.com.

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Smart cities: More than sensors and buzzwords - The Herald

Take a sneak peek at season 3 of UTOPIA on ABC

NBAs Got Talent ... right? Rob Sitch decides. Picture: ABC

WHAT to watch? Theres never been more on offer. Heres your cheat sheet for the evenings top picks.

Utopia

ABC / 9pm

Four stars

What better use of a government departments time is there than a talent contest? Rob Sitch, Kitty Flanagan, Celia Pacquola and the rest of the team at the National Building Authority return for a third season, and it seems the pointless time-wasting and nitpicking never ends. Brilliant, seamless (and seemingly effortless) comedy.

Think before you ink: Dave Navarro is master of ceremonies. Picture: SevenSource:Foxtel

Ink Master

7mate / 8.30pm

Three & half stars

New season Ink Master pits masters against apprentices, and whoever is operating the swear word bleeper will need to be treated for repetitive strain injury. Things get heated, quickly, between the artists and make no mistake, they are artists. Plenty of cool new challenges, including tattooing on fingernails, and Craig Foster returns after being controversially booted off a previous season. The worst thing for human canvases is that judges immediately point out the flaws of their new ink.

Emma Stone talks about why La La Land was a risky film for her. Picture: AFPSource:AFP

Close Up With the Hollywood Reporter

Foxtel Arts / 7.30pm

Three stars

The guest list for celeb reporter Stephen Galloways round table discussion reads like a Whos Who of Hollywoods leading ladies. Emma Stone, Taraji P. Henson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Naomie Harris, Amy Adams and Isabelle Huppert sit down to have a casual yakety-yak about all things film.

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What to watch tonight: Anna Brain's picks: Utopia season return - NEWS.com.au

If Paul Verhoeven has taught moviemakers anything during his time spentdirecting blockbusters, its that action and violence can be as meaningful as they are lean and mean.

In RoboCop Exploring an Action Masterpiece, video essayist Rossatron explains: RoboCopis heavy on action, but it always feels there for a specific reason. What that reason is varies throughout the film, ranging from social commentary, to satire, to punctuation between beats in the narrative progression of Alex Murphys (Peter Weller) journey from slain police officer to the titular resurrected RoboCop. But one things for sure: As the video says, This isnt a mindless one-man army film, but a film about a weaponone that is discovering where it came from and what it is, made in a decade so obsessed with the glamorization of the military and so affected by Cold War thinking. [Its] a film about the militarization of a police force as the foundation of a new utopia, and the ghost in the shell and dangerous glitches of the new technology that is needed to make that feel so prescient and important.

Rossatron points to a major contrast between VerhoevensRoboCopand the 2014 remake of the original film: What Verhoeven brings to the action is clarity. Everything is well covered and the editing is in support of what is happening on screen. In the remake,RoboCoppretty much just shoots anywhere, and we see robots getting shot. We dont establish where they are, instead only seeing what has been shot after Robo has fired. We always follow the gun, the firing and then the aftermath. However, in the originalRoboCop, we almost always get one shot of a criminalaimingfirst, before seeing RoboCop fire. That one extra shot each time adds so much: We get a sense of geography and direction, and of course, tension.

Good old, shaky-cam-free action films like RoboCop,Rossatron argues, also heighten audiences sense of space in each bullet-ridden sequence. Thank God for the 180 degree line, he adds. Everything happens on one plane. It can be so helpful in a gunfight to keep the audiences understanding of what is happening clear. If a bad guy shoots to the right,RoboCopshoots to the left. If that plane changes, we cut to a wider shot, or an exaggerated movement to show the change in direction. Simple.

These basic formal techniques, coupled with the directors tongue-in-cheek perspective on American cultures celebration of consumerism, corporatism and carnal violence imbues what mighttypically be construed as silly, high-concept fare with meaty subtext and even philosophical wisdom. Watch the video, then ask yourself: How can you make your action features concept and execution actuallymeansomething?MM

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Doing Action Justice: Watch How Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop Gives Excessive Action the Treatment It Deserves (Video) - MovieMaker Magazine

Kilmarnock-based system builder Utopia Computers has gone all-out with its latest creation the Sonox C4 that it calls the 'world's fastest desktop PC' that also happens to be the first watercooled Quad CPU system in Europe.

It might be a bold claim, but the system builder backs it up with some pretty jaw-dropping specs. Coming equipped with fourIntel Xeon E7 CPUs installed on a SuperMicro motherboard, the system is configurable up to 96 cores, 192 threads and a staggering 2TB of memory with a 4TB option on the way (your eyes don't deceive you, that's RAM, not storage).

And the price tag is just as staggering, starting at23,362 and rising to 83,311.

Obviously this isn't going to be your run-of-the-mill system for any old user, and in fact this system in particular was an entirely bespoke system initially made to order, said Utopia director Craig Hume:Over the last few years we have been building ever faster and more exciting computers. We listen to the needs of our clients and while we are a hardware manufacturer, we also believe we are a solutions provider. The new C4 range of Sonox PCs was born from the requirements of an individual client. Now that we have served that client we are excited to offer this solution to everyone.

We believe in working closely with our clients to help create the perfect specification for their needs. added Andrew Robinson, workstation specialist at Utopia. We take the time to understand the outcomes that our clients are looking to achieve. At this level of system, each part down the the individual fan mounts, are hand picked to ensure the ultimate in performance and reliability.

If you want to see just how mad you can make the workstation, have a look at Utopia's system configuator here.

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Utopia's new desktop is a quad CPU beast that starts at 23000 - PCR-online.biz

The recent story of 17 students passing a math exam out of 139 re-taking it points out the sorry state of education in Caymans public schools. We have spent millions of dollars on new physical facilities which turn out the same unacceptable results. Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and expecting different results.

Want a different result? Go back to the tried and true old ways. Ever since educators bought into The Emperors New Clothes, in other words, into the new math, that there is no need for teaching English grammar nor sentence construction, and into the fantasy that every child is intellectually curious, many high school graduates cannot read, write or do basic math, let alone know very much about the wide world around them. This is the product being foisted on unsuspecting, but increasingly aware, employers.

The new math has befuddled many parents, and continues to do so, let alone the poor students attempting to master it. The results are clearly not only disastrous for pupils, but also our whole country.

Why is it that a 1950s or early 1960s high school diploma is the equivalent of a university degree today (and I am being generous)? Why is it that, using Canada as an example, todays students cannot pass a test which students of all ages in a one room schoolhouse in rural Saskatchewan could pass in 1913?

This is a phenomenon which occurs all over the world. The economist Thomas Sowell has called it the vision of the anointed. In other words, the elite educational bureaucracy bought into methods of teaching which do not benefit the majority of students who need a foundation of basic skills and knowledge on which to build their real-life experience.

Any attempt to challenge the vision of the anointed and to say that the emperor has no clothes is met with ridicule by the educational establishment as in, you must be stupid to challenge the vision of all those government bureaucrats and expensive consultants.

I do not blame teachers who are caught up, along with students and their parents, in this grand charade. However, it is time to stop the charade and tell the truth. Why were methods of teaching and doing math, which had been successful for centuries, thrown over for the new math, the new utopia? I would venture a guess that Linton Tibbetts, when growing up on the Brac, was not taught the new math. I would also venture that, along with the old math, he was taught English grammar, geography, physics and civics.

Therefore, do you want to change the results? Go back to the old ways. They are tried and true. I recognise that the apologists for the anointed will have more excuses for not doing so than Carter has liver pills. However, the time for excuses is over. The time for accountability has arrived and must be demanded.

Paul Simon

Originally posted here:

Something new in Cayman education? Let's return to the old - Cayman Compass

Press Release Taxpayers Union

The Taxpayers Union says the Green Partys attempt to increase the welfare state is not only an unnecessary burden on taxpayers but also founded on a misunderstanding of the economic realities facing New Zealand. Mac Mckenna, an economist at the Taxpayers Greens Utopia: The fastest way to achieving equality is to make everybody poorer 17 JULY 2017 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Taxpayers Union says the Green Partys attempt to increase the welfare state is not only an unnecessary burden on taxpayers but also founded on a misunderstanding of the economic realities facing New Zealand.

Mac Mckenna, an economist at the Taxpayers Union, says, The reality is that these new Green Party policies are based on misconstrued beliefs about the New Zealand economy. Firstly, that inequality has been increasing in New Zealand. This is quite simply not true. Two recent reports by the New Zealand Initiative and NZIER, respectively, demonstrate that inequality is unchanged in over two decades.

Secondly, their policy to increase the minimum wage by $2 an hour, and eventually indexing it to 66% of the average wage, comes in spite of New Zealand already having the highest minimum to average wage ratio in the OECD. As it currently stands, the minimum to average wage ratio in New Zealand is approximately 0.52. This is significantly higher than other comparable countries such as Australia (0.44), the UK (0.41), Canada (0.40), and the US (0.25).

The irony is that indexing the minimum wage to the average wage may become self-fulfilling under a Green Government. Their combination of policies deters growth, innovation and productivity, as well as pours away taxpayer money. It is therefore quite possible that the average wage will fall achieving their 66% average wage policy without even having to increase the minimum.

The Greens do not seem to grasp the concept that New Zealand can only get wealthier and increase living standards if we become more productive, innovative, and increase output. The Greens seem to think that disincentivizing the productive and rewarding the unproductive will make us better off.

The Greens are the only party to date who has proposed a tax increase, in the form of a new 40% top tax rate. Not only is this envy politics, but it is quite alarming that when the Governments books project enormous surpluses into the foreseeable future, the Greens still dont think New Zealand taxpayers are parting with enough of their money.

ENDS

Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz Original url

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Scoop Business Green's Utopia: making everybody poorer - Scoop.co.nz

Greens Utopia: The fastest way to achieving equality is to make everybody poorer

17 JULY 2017 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Taxpayers Union says the Green Partys attempt to increase the welfare state is not only an unnecessary burden on taxpayers but also founded on a misunderstanding of the economic realities facing New Zealand.

Mac Mckenna, an economist at the Taxpayers Union, says, The reality is that these new Green Party policies are based on misconstrued beliefs about the New Zealand economy. Firstly, that inequality has been increasing in New Zealand. This is quite simply not true. Two recent reports by the New Zealand Initiative and NZIER, respectively, demonstrate that inequality is unchanged in over two decades.

Secondly, their policy to increase the minimum wage by $2 an hour, and eventually indexing it to 66% of the average wage, comes in spite of New Zealand already having the highest minimum to average wage ratio in the OECD. As it currently stands, the minimum to average wage ratio in New Zealand is approximately 0.52. This is significantly higher than other comparable countries such as Australia (0.44), the UK (0.41), Canada (0.40), and the US (0.25).

The irony is that indexing the minimum wage to the average wage may become self-fulfilling under a Green Government. Their combination of policies deters growth, innovation and productivity, as well as pours away taxpayer money. It is therefore quite possible that the average wage will fall achieving their 66% average wage policy without even having to increase the minimum.

The Greens do not seem to grasp the concept that New Zealand can only get wealthier and increase living standards if we become more productive, innovative, and increase output. The Greens seem to think that disincentivizing the productive and rewarding the unproductive will make us better off.

The Greens are the only party to date who has proposed a tax increase, in the form of a new 40% top tax rate. Not only is this envy politics, but it is quite alarming that when the Governments books project enormous surpluses into the foreseeable future, the Greens still dont think New Zealand taxpayers are parting with enough of their money.

ENDS

Scoop Media

New Zealand's grassroots campaign for lower taxes and less government waste

The New Zealand Taxpayers' Union is an independent activist group, dedicated to being the voice for Kiwi taxpayers in the corridors of power. It's here to fight government waste and make sure New Zealanders get value for money from their tax dollar. New Zealanders are invited to join and donate at http://taxpayers.org.nz

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Green's Utopia: making everybody poorer - Scoop.co.nz (press release)

Its been a good half a year for two particular adult dystopian science-fiction backlist titles. In the months following the election of President Trump, George Orwells 1984 and Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale shot to the top of the charts. Both titles landed on the NPD BookScan and Amazon bestseller lists for print and Kindle e-books, respectively, for the first half of 2017, and both were newly released in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April.

So why arent there more sci-fi dystopian titles from the deep backlist on the bestselling lists?

In a way, the time was particularly right for these two titles. 1984, set in a world ruled by an authoritarian government that monitors how its population acts, speaks, and thinks, skyrocketed to the top of the charts after the use of the term alternative facts by Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway reminded readers of the novels famous term doublespeak. The Handmaids Tale, set in a world run by a small group of white, straight men, imagines the persecution and subjugation of people of color, LGBTQ people, and women. It didnt hurt that Hulu adapted The Handmaids Tale into a TV series with Mad Men star Elizabeth Moss earlier this year.

Yet other titles appear to be equally relevant. John Brunners Club of Rome Quartetcomprised of the novels Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Riderwas released in the late 1960s and 70s and correctly predicted, respectively, overpopulation, a U.S. mired in weapons proliferation and interracial violence, pollution-related ecological disasters, and the emergence of computer viruses.

Or consider, on the more popular end, Aldous Huxleys Brave New World, which Harper published in a new hardcover edition this May for the books 85th anniversary. The novel predicts a situation in which advances in mass production, reproduction, and medical treatments have led to a society dominated by a rigid class structure and the intake of antidepressant and hallucinogenic drugs.

Yet Brunner remains all but ignored in the media cycle, and the new hardcover of Brave New World has sold 525 copies to date, according to NPD BookScan (although the trade paperback, ever a classroom favorite, has sold more than 80,000 this year, with 4,000 in the first week of July alone).

Jaime Levine, publisher at Diversion Books, said her company publishes the e-book versions of C.L. Moores quintessential dystopian book, Doomsday Morning, and Ursula LeGuins environmental sci-fi classic The Lathe of Heaven. But, she added, I cant say that I had been monitoring an uptick in trend.

Shes not the only one. There isnt a spike of interest in Stand on Zanzibar, although weve got a lot of books like that in our deep backlist, said Tor Books associate publisher Patrick Nielsen Hayden. I love that book. Im part of the reason we brought it back into print [in 2011]. But its kind of an artifact of its time.

That said, Tor is taking some advantage in the upsurge of activism, Nielsen Hayden added, by marketing more recent backlist titles like Cory Doctorows Little Brother and Kristen Simmonss Article Five directly to indie booksellers, including, in the case of the Doctorow, a mailing from the author.

On the other hand, John Siciliano, executive editor Penguin Classics, has seen a lot of demand for Yevgeny Zamyatins We, a Russian dystopian novel that inspired 1984, and William Goldings Lord of the Flies, along with its sister imprint Signets successes with Sinclair Lewiss It Cant Happen Here. And Open Road Integrated Media, which publishes the other three Brunner titles in e-book (and The Sheep Look Up in paperback, as of 2016), acquired those rights and re-released those titles in 2014, and has promoted the e-books in four pieces on its digital media verticals The Portalist and Early Bird Books.

The reason we do these is twofold, said executive v-p of marketing Mary McAveney. We want to keep pushing these books out, and were seeing that there are consumers looking for them. From a marketing perspective, I feel like nothing that is backlist is getting enough attention these days.

Betsy Mitchell, who works as a consultant for Open Road acquiring and republishing backlist sci-fi and fantasy, adds that the publisher also has the e-book versions of Octavia Butlers Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. She was ahead of her time, Mitchell added. She actually has a demagogic president whose tagline is Make America Great Again.

What seems clear, thanks to Orwell and Atwood, is that backlist dystopian sci-fi titles can be a gold mine for publishers who promote them at just the right timeand theres no better time for sci-fi than a period of political upheaval. Or, as Nielsen Hayden puts it, I think one of the underrated reasons that people read science fiction in particular is that its a great tool for figuring out what you think about how the world works.

A version of this article appeared in the 07/17/2017 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: With 1984 All the Rage, Is Dystopian Backlist a Publishing Utopia?

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Is Dystopian Backlist a Publishing Utopia? - Publishers Weekly

From ABC TVs Utopia series.

It is getting increasingly hard to make sense of exactly what is happening in Australian energy policy these days. Just ask comedian Rob Sitch, who looked at the industry while researching for his new series ofUtopia, where he plays the head of the fictional National Building Authority.

Looking for grand plans that his character could announce, he conducted a mini Finkel review of his own and looked specifically at Snowy Hydro,even before the Turnbull governments announcement of Snowy 2.0. What he found wasnt so much an energy industry as a market more in common with junk bonds on Wall Street.

Truth is stranger than fiction, he said in an interview last week. In the end, he just found it too bizarre, even for a program like Utopia, which specialises in improbable projects that have the lure of being announceble even if they are never built: Essentially a turntable for government naming rights.

There has been more than bit of that sort of caper in the last few months, and the late John Clarke summed it up neatly with Bryan Dawe in one of the last episodes of their weekly satire, in a memorable interview with Wal Socket.

But if we are to believe, as energy minister Josh Frydenberg suggested on Friday, that the latest COAG meeting will be remembered and hailed as the meeting that turned the ship around on energy policy, it is still not clear exactly where that ship is heading.

Frydenberg was quoting Tony Marxsen, the head of the Australian Energy Market Operator, and it was in reference to the 49 out of 50 recommendations that were adopted from the Finkel Review.

It is what everyone was hoping. But the Finkel Review recommendations were so vague it was not entirely clear what it means. That might be a good thing, if the future is beyond coal.

Turnbull tried not to frighten the horses on the weekend by telling the Queensland LNP congress that anyone who did not believe in the future of coal was delusional.

One could strongly argue the opposite, as did Bloomberg New Energy Finance when shooting down the absurd technology costs pushed by the Minerals Council. But that is the role that Turnbull and Frydenberg have to play if they are ever to get a version of the Clean Energy Target past the partys right wing.

There are four key considerations to be taken out of the COAG meeting last Friday.

The first is on the future of the CET itself. The states are promising to go it alone, but at this stage it seems little more than playing politics. It is hard to see what interest the ACT, already at 100 per cent renewables by 2020, would have in a state-based CET.

Victoria is still yet to introduce legislation for the VRET, its own state-based renewables target of 40 per cent by 2025. Studies show that the state-based initiatives, like the Victoria and Queensland targets, will be enough to get the country to the current 2030 emissions reduction targets.

That means that any national Clean Energy Target will be of little use unless it aims a lot higher than the 26-28 per cent reductions current sought by the Coalition government.

But with Turnbull still describing the Queensland governments target of 50 per cent renewables as reckless, there is little room to propose a scheme that will see that much renewable or more across the nation.

And he has to deal with outrageous outbursts last week by the likes of energy committee chief Craig Kelly (renewables are killing people); Resources Minister Matt Canavan (we should ignore climate change) and broadcaster Alan Jones (the head of AEMO should be run out of town).

Instead, the focus needs to be put on the other important aspects of the Finkel recommendations.

Chief among these is the Generator Security Obligation. COAG resolved to ask AEMO to put together a rule-change to put to the Australian Energy Market Commission, the rule-making body known for its glacial progress on rule changes.

If the AEMC can somehow bring itself to issue a rule change in less than five years, something it has been unable to do with other key proposals that might weaken the incumbent business model, then it is hoped that AEMO is given a huge amount of discretion on where dispatch ale storage needs to be installed.

Frydenberg was at pains to point out to RenewEconomy last week that he was not suggesting that each and every wind and solar farm would have to have certain amounts of storage. That, he insisted, is to be decided by AEMO.

And experts point out that the levels of storage and dispatchable generation will be different from state to state, and location to location. This mustnt be used simply as an excuse to make wind and solar more expensive. As ITK analyst David Leitch notes, it could be a dumb idea.

Its pointless to ask a wind farm in Tasmania to add back-up, given the high level of hydro power. But while a new solar farm in South Australia may need to provide more, a second solar farm in the area might not. AEMO will need to monitor and manage this, but it will be a rapidly evolving brief as new technologies come on to the market.

It was interesting to note that COAG also gave the AEMC a strict deadline on new rules for demand management, an issue on which it has been dragging its heals, instructing it to produce something concrete by the summer of 2018/19.

The question of the Energy Security Board is also interesting. An independent chair and a deputy chair are to be appointed, with each state proposing a name or names to be put forward. It is not entirely clear why a new layer of bureaucracy is needed.

Crikey reported earlier this month that two names being discussed included former energy ministers Ian Macfarlane and Martin Ferguson. Either would be a disaster for the industry, and hardly independent, given their respective roles as lobbyists for the coal industry, on one hand, and the oil and gas industry on another.

Finally, there is the question about market gaming by generators. Frydenberg has focused on the generators owned by the Queensland state government (Labor), seeking to embarrass them.

Queensland has left something of a smoking gun because ever since energy minister Mark Bailey put the word on the generators to change their bidding practices, Queensland has gone from rivalling South Australia with the highest wholesale prices over the last five years and not just this last summer as Bailey suggests to having the lowest.

Thats why Frydenberg should ensure that the AER also focuses on other states too. Everyone in the industry knows this practice is rampant, and that is the basis of the proposal to change the 30-minute settlement period to a 5-minute settlement, to match with dispatch.

The current arrangement is simply too easy to game, and it has been happening across the country, as one of the leading networks and some of the new specialist retailers have made very clear.

To hear RenewEconomy editor Giles Parkinson and ITK analyst David Leitch discuss these issues, please tune in to our Energy Insiders podcast, which can be found here.

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Turnbull's coal delusions as COAG changes course on energy - RenewEconomy

Director Ondi Timoner was at a conference when she met the man who would take her on a journey into the Panamanian jungle.

Entrepreneur Jimmy Stice is the man behind the creation of a sustainable town called Kalu Yala, built in the heart of the jungle by the idealistic students he attracts there.

"I'd never heard anyone say they were building a town. He asked me if I'd come down and help him to tell this story and as soon as I walked into the place I was sold and thought 'this must be documented'," Timoner said.

"I looked at this place and the people in it and I realised this was an opportunity to look at young people engaging actively in trying to come up with new ways to live sustainably, at a time where all of us must."

The director knew she could make something suspenseful based on the dramas involved in creating this place, but she also wanted to make a documentary series showing a different side to the young people living there.

"At the same time that it's about the environment, it's really also about millennials, and it's a look at millennials from a very intimate standpoint because when you wake up in the jungle you can't go put make-up on or prepare yourself for the day to go meet people, you are in a real community in the way that we don't live any more," she said.

She moved there with her crew, building a media centre operating off solar power and created the docu-series Jungletown, set to air on SBS Viceland.

It wasn't easy but in her time spent living there, mostly off the grid, Timoner could see its appeal.

"It's an amazing place, it'd change your life.," she said.

"For these kids - many of whom you'll see rebel, some of whom you'll see leave - it's the most profound experience they've ever had in their lives. It can be really challenging to be there and it puts you in a very raw state where you get to see the most authentic version of everyone around you."

*Jungletown airs on SBS VICELAND from July 18

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New show discovers man-made jungle utopia - News.com.au - NEWS.com.au