Of the 800 prices that Asda reduced in the run-up to Christmas and advertised heavily, two thirds were price cuts of 1p. Apple have admitted that children are employed in some of their ipod factories. Could you solve climate change by making everyone drive at 34 miles per hour? Our transition hustings made it into [...]
Archive | February, 2010
Supermarket psychology
If you’ve read books like Why We Buy by Paco Underhill or Martin Lindstrom’s more recent Buyology, this will not be news to you. But I was in a supermarket today, and I was reminded of their techniques. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, and understanding a little about how supermarkets operate could save you [...]
Transition Luton Hustings – a debrief
Last night was the Transition Luton hustings, and I’m pleased to say it went very well. We had all eight candidates and they all behaved themselves, and there was such a good crowd we put out all the chairs we could find and still had had people standing all along the back and in the [...]
The internet and the edge of the world
I recently read this rather amusing/tragic story about the Flat Earth Society. Believe it or not, there is such a society, and they really do believe that the earth is flat. It’s preposterous of course, but the president of the society is adamant that he isn’t trying to be difficult. “To look around, the world [...]
Coming Home to Eat, by Gary Paul Nabhan
“More people than ever before in history have absolutely no involvement in producing the foods that sustain them” writes Gary Paul Nabhan in the introduction to Coming Home to Eat: The pleasures and politics of local food. Consequently, local specialities and varieties are lost. We forget what good food is and we settle for processed [...]
A detox for the affluent west
I was listening to Rob Hopkins on BBC World Service yesterday, and this quote caught my attention. I think it sums up the basic premise of Make Wealth History rather well: “In many ways Transition is designed as a detox for the affluent West. We talk about contraction and convergence, and we need to get [...]
Climate Change 2010 – the game
If you were in charge of the planet, would you be able to keep the wheels of civilization turning without destabilising the planet? That’s the challenge to gamers in Climate Challenge 2010, a computer game due for release this summer. Players are given 200 years to run the world, and watch the consequences of their [...]
What we learned this week
The average British person has 3,370 cubic feet of stuff crammed into their home, twice as much as we had 30 years ago. Last week I posted the Robin Hood Tax website, which has a running poll on whether or not people agree with the idea. In proof that such a tax is required, a [...]
Guest post: Cultivating food security in Africa
By Danielle Nierenberg and Abdou Tenuousness. As hunger and drought spread across Africa, a huge effort is underway to increase yields of staple crops, such as maize, wheat, cassava, and rice. While these crops are important for food security, providing much-needed calories, they don’t provide much protein, vitamin A, thiamin, niacin, and other important vitamins [...]
21 hours – less work, more life
Working less is a cause close to my heart, and not just because I’m lazy – I think there are lots of things wrong with our work culture. I think it’s crazy that some of my friends work far too hard, while others can’t find work at all. Other friends are paid big salaries for [...]
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