Forest Gardening - Permaculture

Forest Gardening with Robert Hart
More details and background on forest garden dynamics and design.

Courtesy of AppleseedGarden, which also offers a lot more edifying eco-agro-videos here.

Perpetual Bacterial Hydrogen Generators

Harvesting 'limitless' hydrogen from self-powered cells

By Mark Kinver
Environment reporter, BBC News
20 September 2011

US researchers say they have demonstrated how cells fueled by bacteria can be "self-powered" and produce a limitless supply of hydrogen.

Until now, they explained, an external source of electricity was required in order to power the process.

However, the team added, the current cost of operating the new technology is too high to be used commercially.

Details of the findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"There are bacteria that occur naturally in the environment that are able to release electrons outside of the cell, so they can actually produce electricity as they are breaking down organic matter," explained co-author Bruce Logan, from Pennsylvania State University, US.


"We use those microbes, particularly inside something called a microbial fuel cell (MFC), to generate electrical power.

Applied Sociocracy - Corp Democracy

Can a Company Be Run as a Democracy?

By JACLYNE BADAL
* The Wall Street Journal
* APRIL 23, 2007

During a recent strategy meeting at Ternary Software Inc., a programmer criticized the chief executive's new incentive plan for employees. An hourlong discussion ensued, in which several participants, including the CEO, critiqued the proposal. Ultimately, all six participants agreed to handle incentives differently.

That part was crucial: Ternary runs itself as a democracy, and every decision must be unanimous. Any of Ternary's 13 other employees could have challenged the incentive decision and forced it to be revisited.

Running a company democratically sounds like a recipe for anarchy, and it can prompt bureaucratic whiplash: Ternary, a company with annual revenues of around $2 million, adjusted salaries for employees up and down several times last year.

Influential retired officials push drug decriminalization

Leading world politicians urge 'paradigm shift' on drugs policy

Afghans harvest opium in a poppy field.
Photograph: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

Jamie Doward
The Observer

29 May 2011

Kofi Annan, George Shultz and Richard Branson among those urging public health approach.

 
 
Former presidents, prime ministers, eminent economists and leading members of the business community will unite behind a call for a shift in global drug policy. The Global Commission on Drug Policy will host a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York to launch a report that describes the drug war as a failure and calls for a "paradigm shift" in approaching the issue. Those backing the call include Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico; George Papandreou, former prime minister of Greece; César Gaviria, former president of Colombia; Kofi Annan, former UN secretary general; Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil; George Shultz, former US secretary of state; Javier Solana, former EU high representative; Virgin tycoon Richard Branson; and Paul Volcker, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve.

Agroecology Outstrips Industrial Agriculture on Multiple Fronts

Reimagining Food Systems in the Midst of a Hunger Crisis

A majority of the world's hungry are women and children

By Kanya D'Almeida,
IPS
June 3, 2011

"Analysing the data from the 2006 study by region, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) found that in some parts of Africa the yield increase (from agro-ecological practices) was a stunning 213 percent."

 

WASHINGTON, Jun 3, 2011 (IPS) - Today one billion people are living in hunger, not because of scarcity of production or a shortage of food on shelves in the global marketplace, but because they "lack the most basic purchasing power needed to acquire it", Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, said Thursday.

Currently, 35-40 percent of harvests are lost due to inadequate transportation and storage facilities, while a further 35-40 percent goes to wealthy Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

According to experts like De Schutter, the inability of 10 percent of the world's population to feed itself is also a reflection of unsustainable patterns of consumption and deeply flawed models of industrialised agricultural production which, if allowed to continue, will divert 50 percent of global cereal harvests towards feeding cattle by the year 2050.

RUSHKOFF: The Evolution Will Be Socialized

"I (suggest) we “fork” the Internet – that we accept the fact that the net is built on a fundamentally hierarchical architecture, surrender it to the corporations who run it, and consider building something else for ourselves."

The Evolution Will Be Socialized

By Douglas Rushkoff

02.07.11

From the actions of the Egyptian government to the policies of Facebook, the monopolies of central banks to the corporatization of the Internet, we are witnessing the potential of a peer-to-peer networking become overshadowed by the hierarchies of the status quo. It’s time for us to gather and see what is still possible on the net, and what, if anything, can be built to replace it.

I have had a vague misgiving about the direction the net’s been going for, well, maybe 15 years. But until recently, it was more like the feeling when another Starbucks opens on the block, a Wal-Mart moves into town, or a bank forecloses unnecessarily on that cool local bookstore to make room for another bank.

Lately, however, what’s wrong with the net has become quite crystalized for me. It started with the corporate-government banishment of Wikileaks last year, and reached a peak with Egypt shutting off its networks to stave off revolution. The Obama administration seeking the ability to do pretty much the same thing in the US, Facebook’s “sponsored stories,” and the pending loss of net neutrality don’t help, either.

Using Greywater

A Geodesic Greenhouse — Year-Round Gardening at 6000 Feet