I often wonder if any serious study of urban morphology could be done without Google Earth's

help. Google Earth is our macroscope, allowing us to see with the naked eye what is too big to see.
But no matter how useful satellite photography is, without aerial photography you cannot really
see depth, and the master of aerial photography is undoubtedly Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

The film is a tour of the ecologies of Earth, starting from basic life to cities. The most striking
images are those of natural cities, especially one that seems to grow out of the rock as if it were
just one of its features. And who could argue it's not? The talent of Yann Arthus - Bertrand is
undeniable, he even makes Manhattan seem small at some point in the film. But the film quickly
turns into a green propaganda vessel while it might have been a celebration of the ties of mankind
to nature.

The obsession with control and prediction is tragically what in our human ecologies has caused
the most destruction and chaos. In the name of upholding a failed prediction, urban planning, it is
control that dictates that homes may not be owned in the sprawling slums of the world. The slums
remain in squalid poverty, vulnerable to any environmental change, man-made or not, because
slum homes can be summarily demolished. In a chaotic world, the only true sustainability is the
ability to renew our environments for any changes we encounter, and control and prediction are
an obstacle to this.

We now know that the majority of species that have ever lived have disappeared. Extinction is a
natural and routine event from a geological point of view. Species and ecosystems are threatened
with destruction in the modern era due to human actions to an extent rarely seen in earth history.
Probably so many species have been threatened in such a short time only during the handful of
mass extinction events. As the human population closes in on the six billion mark, about half of
the world's forests have been transformed, degraded or destroyed. We make most of the fresh water
available. Species distribution is largely determined by climate, as is ecosystem distribution and
vegetation zones of plants. Climate change can simply shift these distributions, but often barriers
and human presence will not provide opportunities for shifts in distribution. For these reasons,
climate change is likely to eliminate certain species and ecosystems.

The problem is serious, and the next century will see many species and ecosystems disappear.
Much can be done, though, starting with recognizing the problem and then identifying
management goals. A sound strategy would highlight efforts to increase the amount of protected
land and manage unprotected lands better.

Life is the universe's most powerful force. The Earth is going to take anything to do with it. But
unless we take life as our own social paradigm, we're not going to get along well. If we base our
society on control rather than growth, our collapse will be caused by the first unpredictable shock
we witness.
Extreme Measures is a film that deals with moral and medical dilemmas that survive in order to
prioritize and questionable ethics of doing bad things that lead to better results. In particular, the
film leads us to dwell on the question of whether kidnapping, experimenting and killing few
healthy people is morally acceptable in order to further medical research on a cure for paralysis
that weakens millions.

In the film, Dr. Lawrence Myrick, a renowned neurologist and medical researcher, takes
underground homeless people who he insists that society would not miss them and uses them as
his human experimental research subjects without their consent through his methods, he has made
significant breakthroughs in restoring mobility in paralytics by inducing nervous growth at the
expense of the many lives of those who have become his subjects.

Now, the dilemma here has very debatable answers. At one point in the film, Dr. Myrick asked the
protagonist, Dr. Guy Luthan, "If you could cure cancer by killing one person, wouldn't you have
to do that?" He also claims that people die every day anyway, and his research aims at 'those with
little point in their lives', 'those that spend their lives lost, cold, stoned or worse', ‘those who have
no future’. In the eyes of Myrick, they become heroes who help the medical field's boundaries
further.

Myrick's methods would be acceptable from the point of view of utilitarianism, which looks at an
individual act and determines whether it is good if it produces the greatest happiness or good for
the greatest number. A utilitarian would ask, "Does this particular action maximize happiness or
produce the greatest good?" The answer from this perspective would be, "Myrick's method will
make life better for millions of people who will be able to walk again, so yes." A utilitarian looks
at the context and circumstances of one act to judge if it will lead to a greater number of people
having good consequences.