If they ran in my town, I would vote for The Rent Is Too Damn High Party. For those interested in sustainable homes, there’s an interesting introduction to the Passivhaus on the Ecologist. How to share the world’s resources according to, erm, Share The World’s Resources. They ought to know.
Archive | October, 2010
Appropriate technology of the week – tube wells
Climate adaptation in action – this area in Bangladesh is prone to flooding, something that will only get worse in coming years. With floods come waterborne diseases, as wells fill with flood water and become contaminated. Building the pump for a tube well above the flood line solves this problem. Platforms are built two feet [...]
Conspiracy of Freedom – Play
Another of the Conspiracy of Freedom animations. This one was inspired by the Good Childhood report, and it looks at childhood and consumerism. One more to post next week.
We need a bigger cake!
Imagine you’re having dinner with four friends, and your host serves up a cake. Great. Everyone loves cake. When it is cut up into five slices however, it looks like this. Did I say five slices? You need to look closer – the smallest slice is at the top there, between the green one and [...]
From Poverty to Power, by Duncan Green
I regularly drop in on Duncan Green’s From Poverty to Power blog, so the book has been on my reading list for a little while now. Green is head of research at Oxfam, and the book is a kind of development reader, a broad attempt to envision approaches that work. From Poverty to Power is [...]
Ask your MP to improve standards for rented homes
A couple of weeks ago I posted my review of Local Sustainable Homes, and noted that the only sector of the UK’s housing stock that wasn’t covered was private rented homes. These always get left out of efficiency measures. The landlords aren’t the ones paying the bills, so there is no incentive to insulate or [...]
Austerity: commonsense or nonsense?
Mark Blyth from the Watson Institute for International Studies explains, in imaginative fashion, why austerity measures are a bad idea. It’s a video that hasn’t been seen nearly enough times, in my opinion, nor by the right people. HT Triple Crisis
What we learned this week
This geographical map of social networking is very clever and rather funny. So is Bill Clinton’s back-up plan for beating Al-Qaeda, which postulated that the US could ”scare the shit out of al Qaeda if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas rappelled out of helicopters into the middle of their camp.” Ten things that will [...]
Will we ever get the truth about Iraq?
Almost 400,000 formerly classified documents have been released by Wikileaks this week. The US Army field reports show numerous incidents of torture or execution that have been ignored. It also lists civilian casualties. This is notable because we have been repeatedly told that the US doesn’t keep records of civilian deaths – it’s why estimating [...]
The 17 new national temperature records in 2010
Thanks to Climate Central for this visual update on the number of temperature records this year, the hottest year so far. For the benefit of European readers, let me put those in Celsius: Ascension Islands – 34.8C Solomon Islands – 36.1C Finland – 37.2C Belarus – 38.8C Ukraine – 41.2C Colombia – 42.2C Russia – [...]
Books
No data found
