United Diversity

Together We Have Everything

Backyard Solar Dish Melts Steel

[https://cleantechnica.com/files/2009/08/rawsolar.jpg] We’re all familiar with the vast solar thermal power stations in the desert that use mirrors to make steam to drive turbines. Giant solar thermal arrays are already making electricity in the desert in Spain and California. But what if we

Rural revolution in Colombia goes digital and p2p

“Latinamerica is particularly well equipped for these changes (peer production) by their cultural affinity with the values of P2P”, said Michel Bauwens on an interview [https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/espectaculos/16-15035-2009-08-23.html] for Pagina/12 the Argentinian journal. This statement seems to prove itself when one reads

Bike-frastructure 101: Sharrows, Street Parking, Superhighways and More

[https://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010404.html] Increasing the number of bikes on the road is becoming a serious goal for forward-thinking leaders. As Elisabeth Rosenthal recently wrote in the New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/world/europe/10bike.html?pagewanted=all], there will soon be

Biosphere Home Farming from Philips designers

See larger image here. [https://api.ning.com/files/MpSRpEHITCNAANYpqA8IBLP-fhkajigh1DLQJ*Mh2stYrPWIo5FIsVBKvw64eNt49TwbYzBu9NNHiSy7ZNoSV-1ikpDRCQOB/food2_hr.jpg] by Clive van Heerden, August 6, 2009 Looking into the economics and politics of rising food prices and theories about impending food shortages led us to create the “food farm” to test peoples sensitivity to the

Agroforestry Found On Nearly Half The World’s Farms

For centuries, farmers have placed trees among their crops to enhance soil health, raise marketable fruits or nuts, and protect row crops from damaging winds. Yet agroforestry, as the practice is known, is generally considered a rarity among mainstream farmers. New data suggests that more farmers practice agroforestry than previously

The Case Against Organic Food Does Not Stand Up

By Peter Melchett There really are nutritional benefits, as research to be published next year will show Ben Goldacre says the Soil Association [https://www.soilassociation.org/]‘s criticism of the recent Food Standards Agency [https://www.food.gov.uk/] research on nutrients is “not about organic food [https://www.

Peer to peer ‘unclasses’

Springwise [https://springwise.com/education/unclasses/] reports on the LaidOffCamp [https://springwise.com/life_hacks/laidoffcamp/] initiative: “Unconferences have become increasingly common over the past decade or so, notable in particular for their low-key structure and participant-driven format. LaidOffCamp is one such example, and now—inspired, in fact, by that

Stroud Pound to be Launched in Threadneedle Street

The official unveiling of the exquisitely designed Stroud Pound will take place on Threadneedle Street, outside the offices of the Stroud Valleys Project and opposite Stroud’s very own Old Lady (Teashop) on Saturday 12th September at 10 am. Four denominations of Stroud Pound vouchers will then be available to

The revival of homegrown urban agriculture

Commentary from Sam Rose: “Not only is urban agriculture an emerging movement for individuals, it is also being pursued as part of a sustainable urban renewal strategy throughout the midwest. Some examples include: * https://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/SweetWaterFishFarming/HomePage Sweetwater organics Aquaponics fishfarming in Milwaukee WI * self sustaining urban food

Participatory Leadership

We have started to separately collate material on the new forms of leadership that are emerging in networked communities. You can find our tag here [https://delicious.com/mbauwens/P2P-Leadership]. Our latest find is this table by Chris Corrigan [https://chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/?p=2282], which contrasts the new requirements

How p2p Works: An Introduction

When we started talking to people about the project, we’d often find that some didn’t get how p2p works. Not that you have to understand it to use it, but if you do want to, we produced a couple of simple animations that explain how p2p works. (First,

Rooftop Farms, a 6,000 square foot organic vegetable farm in Brooklyn, New York.

From Brooklyn Supper blog [https://www.brooklynsupper.blogspot.com/2009/07/rooftop-farms-brooklyn.html]. Photo by Elizabeth Stark ©2008-2009. All rights reserved. See larger image here at Brooklyn Supper. [https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_lx_oVvv15WQ/SmUJ4p5twLI/AAAAAAAABpQ/kuKOueyzbp4/s1600-h/DSC_0008.JPG] This is a roof of a warehouse in

Harvesting and Preserving Medicinal Herbs

A number of people have asked me to write about my new herbal adventures more, and I’ve resolved to do so. I haven’t forgotten about writing about the big questions (more to say still on the middle ground between Kingsnorth and Monbiot), but I did want to answer

We need a p2p architecture for money too!

> How to best transcend the current economic mess? Put Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, Elon Musk, Tim O’Reilly, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Nathan Myhrvold, and Danny Hillis in a room somewhere and don’t let them out until they have framed a new, massively-distributed financial system, founded on sound,

Peak Water?

By Chris Mayer at The Daily Reckoning [https://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/price-of-water-rises-in-china/2009/08/21/] (Australian edition) The price of water is starting to rise in a big way, at least in China. I’ve expected this for a few years. To set the table, water rates in China

Paris rooftops swarm with bees as urban honey industry takes off

Photo by Franco Zecchin. Paris, the urban beekeeper Jean Paucton removing frames from the hive atop the Opera Garnier. By Charles Bremner in Paris The Times August 18, 2009 Tourists are not the only species swarming on the Champs Élysées this August. Also enjoying the sunshine are squadrons of bees,

Fish Systems and Design

[https://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010368.html] A grim new film, The End of the Line, [https://endoftheline.com/] reveals the impact of overfishing on our oceans. It exposes the extent to which global stocks of fish are dwindling; features scientists who warn we could see the end of most

Squat Freeshop on Commercial Road

Swap shops, Freeshops, give away shops, they all aim to go against the capitalist framework, and often people can’t quite get their heads around the idea, that, yes it is free and you can take it! Illustrations by Thereza Rowe [https://www.therezarowe.com/] When I dropped by the

Capitalism – A love story

Go Michael! Michael Moore does it again. He’s like the little boy who dares to tell us “the emperor is wearing no clothes”. “It’s a crime story. But it’s also a war story about class warfare. And a vampire movie, with the upper 1 percent feeding off

The man who planted trees

The power of one man to transform a desert into a lush and verdant land. Shepherd Elzard Bouffier lives alone with his sheep not far from a drought-stricken and windswept hamlet. After the death of his wife and child, he chooses to devote the rest of his life to a

URBAN BEES VS COUNTRY BEES

[https://urbanhomestead.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/jubees.jpg] and urban bees win, well from the likes of this article they do! > The national bee-keeping body has recently reported high mortality in the country near corn, sunflower and rapeseed fields. Bee deaths across Europe have been 30 to

Simple Solar - Part 1

I presented a workshop on Simple Solar at the Boston Skill Share on a windy Sunday, April 19, outside the Stata Center at MIT. Werner and Julie of Videosphere [https://energyvision.blogspot.com/] recorded me and I finally got around to doing a rough edit of the first part, the

Growing Grains at City Farmer

This year, Maria experimented to see if she could grow wheat, flax and quinoa at our Vancouver Compost Garden, and she succeeded. The wheat and flax were purchased from a local seed company, Salt Spring Seeds. The wheat varieties are named Red Fife, Marquis, Kamut and Blue Tinge Ethiopian. The

Guest Post by David Cohn: Lessons in Crowdfunding

Photo by ThinkPanama [https://www.flickr.com/photos/23065375@N05/2247354638/] Almost ten months ago I launched Spot.Us via a Knight Foundation grant [https://newschallenge.org/winner/2008/spot-us] which is trying to pioneer “community funded reporting,” the act of distributing the cost of hiring an investigative journalist. In