The Cause of and the Solution to Global Demographic 'Problems'
Meeting for the week of December 06, 2021 - December 12, 2021
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: The Cause of and the Solution to Global Demographic 'Problems'
Speaker: Dr Stuart Gietel-Basten
Is this your first time to visit us? If so, welcome to our weekly online meeting! To complete our meeting, please continue reading from here to the bottom of this page. Each Monday our week’s meeting is posted early in the morning, U.S. Pacific Time. These meetings are designed so that you can read and watch what we post anytime during the week. The entire meeting takes about 60 minutes to complete, with the video conference recording of the program being the bulk of the time. Note that you can easily read this meeting with your favorite device, so feel free to take our meeting on the go with you. Please also make sure to complete the attendance form at the bottom and leave a comment. Enjoy!
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Read and watch the content below in its entirety.
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Welcome to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley!
Here’s a message from our Club President.
Hi Members and Guests,
Welcome to this week’s meeting of the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley.
December is Disease Prevention and Treatment Month on the Rotary calendar, recognizing this important cause. Rotarians around the world work hard to combat many diseases - including polio and malaria - through education and awareness, vaccinations and preventative measures, and clinics and treatment centers. These efforts include innovative projects that utilize technology to help expand access to healthcare and treatment, such as the telemedicine project our club has been involved with. To find out more about the many different projects that Rotarians around the world are involved with, you can visit the Rotary Showcase website:
https://map.rotary.org/en/project/pages/project_showcase.aspx
December is also a month where many people have the opportunity to spend time and celebrate with friends and family and to indulge. However, it is also a time that many people in our communities - locally and around the world - continue to face hardships and struggles. If you have the opportunity, please consider getting involved and providing support, whether it be volunteering your time or donating a gift, and embrace the chance to Serve to Change Lives.
Brett Sham
President, Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley
president@siliconvalleyrotary.com
Guests, we are happy to have you join us this week!
As we see it, our flexibility as an online, asynchronous club allows a special type of service to Rotarians around the world: we make it easier for anyone to strive for and maintain 100% attendance. That keeps you engaged with Rotary's events and ideas, and provides a moment of inspiration for devoting your creativity, talents, and resources to good causes.
You are certainly not required to pay anything in order to attend our meetings. However, if you would like to make a small contribution to our service efforts, you are welcome to do so in our secure Happy Dollars section down the page. This could be what you normally pay at your own club's meetings for lunch, for example. Any amount is welcome, but first and foremost, we're happy you've joined us, and hope you will share with others who we are and what we do to help inspire Service Above Self.
And don't forget to fill out our attendance form so you get an email you can pass on to your club's secretary!
The Four Way Test
The Four-Way Test is a nonpartisan and nonsectarian ethical guide for Rotarians to use for their personal and professional relationships.
Of the things we think, say or do
Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
Weekly Funny with Shags.
We believe laughter is an important part of life, and we should all make time to laugh a little. This segment of our meeting is meant to tickle you just enough. These funnies are curated by member Steven "Shags" Shagrin !
The New Pastor
A new pastor was visiting in the homes of his parishioners. At one house it seemed obvious that someone was at home, but no answer came to his repeated knocks at the door. Therefore, he took out a business card and wrote 'Revelation 3:20' on the back of it and stuck it in the door.
When the offering was processed at the next worship service, he found that his card had been returned. Added to it was this cryptic message, 'Genesis 3:10'.
Reaching for his Bible to check out the citation, he soon broke out in laughter. Revelation 3:20 begins 'Here I am! I stand at the door and knock.'
Genesis 3:10 reads: 'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid'
Weekly Inspiration
Every week we start our meetings with a short video highlighting innovation, inspiration, entrepreneurship, or social change.
I've run across some pretty amazing stories in my years of collecting videos to share with teachers around the globe. This one, called Porcelain Unicorn, is one of my favorites. There isn't much dialogue, but it's a beautifully powerful story told in just under three minutes.
World of Rotary
Every week we will focus on a particular story that tells of our organization and the work of Rotarians in the world.
https://blog.rotary.org/2021/12/03/being-a-good-ally-to-those-with-disabilities/
Through a Rotarian's Lens
Sometimes a photo can capture an amazing moment. In this section Member Keith Marsh shares his incredible photography!
If you'd like to submit a photo for this section please contact Keith.
While visting our daughter and grand daughter in Reno, NV, we went to the Museum of Modern Art. At the end of one hallway was this tapered yellow box open at both ends. The far wall was painted with blended colors. I took this photo with my iPhone, but was not happy with the perspective. The perspective cropping tool in Photoshop allowed me to shape the composition with more precision to highlight the shapes and colors of the image.
Learn Something New
This section is curated by members Shags Shagrin and aims to teach our members and guests something new, fun, and useful! If you have any ideas on a fun trick or skill you'd like to share please contact Shags.
How Mushroom Time-Lapses are Filmed (8 min/43 sec)
"Louie Schwartzberg is a pioneering artist who has filmed some stunning footage of mushrooms growing over the course of 40 years. WIRED goes behind-the-scenes with Louie to find out how these amazing time-lapses were made for Netflix's Fantastic Fungi."
Service Report
Tell us about service you’ve done recently in your community.
Click here to fill out The Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley Service Survey
Our Events & Projects
We hold our meetings online, but we do regular service projects and social events in the Silicon Valley! The section is updated every week with our upcoming events. We welcome guests to all of the events and service projects listed here.
Upcoming Events:
All times are Pacific Time! (San Francisco time)
District 5170 Events
All times are Pacific Time! (San Francisco time)
More events coming soon! All events are open to guests, unless otherwise mentioned. Feel free to join us! If you ever have questions, please email inquiries@siliconvalleyrotary.com
Happy Dollars: Do Good by Sharing Something Good
Each week we ask our members to share stories with the club and toss in a few dollars to support our efforts. The primary goal of this section is to provide a fun way of getting to know each fellow members and guests, while giving back to a good cause.
Happy dollars is an opportunity to share something positive that has happened in your life whether it is personal or business. Think of it as your opportunity to brag a little, but also put a little bit into a karma jar. The money donated through happy dollars is put to charitable use, and the message that you leave for happy dollars will be posted in our online meeting the following week for the entire week for folks to see! (Pending that it’s appropriate!)
Here are the happy dollars contributions from last week!
This section is usually updated in the early hours of Saturday, so contributions made over the weekend may not be listed here.
Program: The Cause of and the Solution to Global Demographic 'Problems'
Speaker: Dr Stuart Gietel-Basten
Every week we bring to you a new program on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education, and how those contribute to service to others.
The Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley seeks to explore perspectives on service from across the world. The views of the speakers in our programs are their own, and unless stated otherwise, are not necessarily reflective of the views of our eClub nor Rotary International.
If you have an idea for a cool speaker, please feel free to reach out to them directly or submit THIS FORM so our Program Committee can contact them!
Our speaker this week is Stuart Gietel-Basten, a professor of Social Science and Public Policy. He is the Director of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's Center for Aging Science; and is Associate Dean (Research) of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Prior to joining HKUST in 2017, he was Associate Professor of Social Policy at the University of Oxford. He received his Ph.D. in historical demography from the University of Cambridge in 2008.
His intro: "Too many people. Too few people. Too many young people. Not enough young people. Too many migrants. Labor shortages require...well, you get the point. The population discourse these days is not only depressing but often completely contradictory. Like other challenging fields, this has allowed the confident snake oil peddler to come in and present simple solutions. Have more babies! Get more people! Restrict the number of babies you can have! It has also allowed certain narratives to grow. These can be - and have been - racist, misogynistic, eugenic, dangerous."
In this talk, Stuart will try to explain how the way people have been trying to 'fix demographic problems' with demographic solutions is completely wrong. In fact, in most cases, the 'problem' itself is so poorly defined that we hardly even know what we are trying to fix. He will try to present a new way of looking at 'population problems' which, ironically for a demographer, de-emphasizes population, and rather focuses on other factors which are equally important. When we do this, we have so many other tools available to build the future we really want, rather than just surrendering ourselves to the demographic apocalypse predicted by so many.
Stuart’s research covers the interplay between changing population dynamics and public/social policy. His research is especially focused on (a) fertility transition; (b) conceptual approaches to aging; (c) population policy. He is the coordinator of the GGS-Asia project, which seeks to run the Generations and Gender Survey in Asian settings – including Hong Kong.
In addition to a number of articles in leading journals in demography and related disciplines, he has written two books on population - Why Demography Matters (with Danny Dorling, Polity Press 2018) and The “Population Problem” in Pacific Asia (Oxford University Press 2019 ) - and co-edited a third – Family Demography in Asia (with Minja-Kim Choe and John Casterline, Elgar 2019).
Members and guests, please welcome Dr. Stuart Gietel-Basten!
My co-authored, gentle introduction to what REALLY matters in the population:
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Why+Demography+Matters-p-9780745698410
My rather more serious, high-minded (and expensive) book on population issues in Asia:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-population-problem-in-pacific-asia-9780199361076?cc=hk&lang=en&
Upcoming Program Recording Schedule
All of our guest speakers and programs are recorded live online over Zoom video conference. We welcome members and guests to join us in one of these upcoming recordings. Recordings are approximately 30 minutes long and are subject to change without notice.
Our online video conference room link for these recordings is always http://zoom.siliconvalleyrotary.com/. You are welcome to join us! Please note the timezone listed for all recordings is US Pacific Time (San Francisco, California, USA).
If you can’t join the live recording, please send your questions for an upcoming speaker to programs@siliconvalleyrotary.com.
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