Ed Dowding

Month: February 2010

How Different Groups Spend Their Day

How Different Groups Spend Their Day – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com. Source: http://blog.alexkelleher.com/2009/08/10/an-average-day/

You have such freedoms! Exercise them!

Lexicon of cooperation

I’ve just been revising a contract we use for websites we build and so having to deal with one of my pet annoyances. I don’t like contracts. They’re boring, stop me doing the fun stuff of work, and seem to spend more time building walls than bridges. The point is that you’re working together, surely? ...

Green Revolution in India Wilts as Subsidies Backfire

In the 1970s, India dramatically increased food production, finally allowing this giant country to feed itself. But government efforts to continue that miracle by encouraging farmers to use fertilizers have backfired, forcing the country to expand its reliance on imported food. India has been providing farmers with heavily subsidized fertilizer for more than three decades. ...

Ethical bottled water is an oxymoron

‘How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?’ 30 Million People Wonder All agreed that disposing of what would eventually amount to 50 tons of thermoplastic polymer resin wasn’t the end of the world. “It’s not like I don’t care, because I do, and most of the time I don’t even ...

A farm for the future

I finally got around to watching A Farm for the Future (available on Google Video) a few nights ago, and found it to be a great introduction to the concepts of permaculture. Key things to realise (some not from the programme): Current methods of farming will not continue to feed you during your lifetime. We ...

Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion

If only… As news of the nation’s collectively held delusion spread, the economy ground to a halt, with dumbfounded citizens everywhere walking out on their jobs as they contemplated the little green drawings of buildings and dead white men they once used to measure their adequacy and importance as human beings. Care of The Onion

What do we call ourselves?

A question from The Blended Lifestyle if we move away from a materialistic life, what is the name for the kind of life we enter into? I don’t like ‘de-materialised’ (so what is it then?), ‘simple’ (it’s not simple), or ‘spiritual’ (problematic term). So I am missing a word. Do you have any ideas? There’s ...

Do you have unused land in London? Get free money!

A share of £75,000 is now up for grabs for London’s green-fingered community groups. The cash is available as part of the Capital Growth scheme, supported by the Mayor of London and managed by London Food Link, which encourages Londoners to grow their own food in under-used areas of the capital. People can apply online ...

Extra Ethical

via United Diversity

Two ideas for storing soup

When you make a big vat of soup – and with root veg being so cheap at this time of year you’d be crazy not to – you can freeze the remainder so you’re not eating leek and potato or carrot and parsnip every day. It makes sense to freeze in one- or two-person portions, ...

Hubris and humus – Lessons from the garden

After a day and a half of driving rain, which seemed very befitting once the mountains and forests were made dark by the thick cloud cover, the weather cleared up on Sunday afternoon so we went out to the garden to do some pruning, since it is the season. We read up about it in ...

Gardening is great

We’ve just been working in the garden for a bit of post-lunch constitutional. It’s been blue sky all day, lovely and warm in the sun. The first compost bin I’ve built is a third full from last year’s banana tree growth. Ali has cleared one of the vegetable patches, Lola has been digging for mice ...

Our first few days at Coueillas

Time flies, it really does. Today is Saturday. We arrived here on Wednesday night. And this is the first time I’ve had my computer out to write something. In part, this is because we don’t have internet yet, despite our best attempts. And in many ways, what a relief. It has allowed us to get ...