Ed Dowding

The founder of Ecotricity is building a wind powered (well, electricity powered) car. Read about it as his blog, Zerocarbonista.

Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves?

If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? What will he do with the leisure that the machine will give him?

I have always suspected that if our economic and political problems are ever really solved, life will become simpler instead of more complex, and that the sort of pleasure one gets from finding the first primrose will loom larger than the sort of pleasure one gets from eating an ice to the tune of a Wurlitzer.

I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies [...] one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.

Some Thoughts on the Common Toad by George Orwell

This page logs mistakes we’ve made, strategies we should have planned and executed differently, and lessons we’ve learned.

Because we are a startup organization working in areas we have little experience with, it is particularly important that we constantly recognize and learn from our shortcomings. We make this log public so as to be up front with any potential supporters about ways in which we need to improve.

Issues Log | GiveWell.

Spotify Media Pack is quite interesting and gives some indication of where they’re going with it all.

• Belgian city plans ‘veggie’ days
• Just Add Spice – Spice is a social enterprise that develops credit systems for engaging people in communities and public services. Spice’s community credit systems have been tried and tested and are uniquely successful in dramatically increasing participation of community members in public services and in achieving community transformation. Spice has strong supporting evidence based on 5 years development work that this is the most effective, low cost and sustainable method of increasing engagement and community participation.
• Time Banking in the UK
• How to make a paracord bracelet
• EU funds blue-sky tech
• EU urges fishing cuts – phew
• Reinventing money – 4 currency system
• Reinventing money II
• EU elections: why what where when who?