Ed Dowding

Turn off your unused mobile phone charger and save equivalent energy for 3 weeks of TV.

Charging a mobile for 1 hour uses 2 watts. Leaving the mobile connected to the charger after the battery is full for 7 hours uses 14 watts. Leaving the charger plugged in and turned on, but not connected to the mobile for 16 hours uses 24 watts. Over 1 year you use 14.6KWh. Turning the ...

Google Transparency Report

Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products. This map shows the number of requests that we received in six-month blocks Google Transparency Report: Government Requests.

Money says 'no'. Money is broken. Keeps saying 'no' to everything sensible, and 'yes' to lots of stupid things.

There are 2,470,000 people unemployed in the UK. There is an energy supply crisis. We know how to insulate houses, make solar panels, wind farms, community heating systems, and so on. So on the one hand we have a major problem, and on the other we have a major solution. And yet we have an ...

Thank you, Waitrose! Free, expensive, friendly, and ethical.

Not only have Waitrose just topped the list of most ethical supermarkets but they’ve also just called me up to give me a bunch of free wood. I was there the other day filling up with petrol, and they had something sitting in a huge wooden crate next to the car wash, so I asked if ...

Year 34: we have sighted land

I think it’s safe to tell you what’s going on, now. Enough of the elements are firmly in place. We’re setting up a small-holding in West Lexham, Norfolk, on 2 acres of land. We will be suppling food to, and helping out with the development of, the new sustainability centre which is being developed there, ...

Boomerang trade

The UK currently exports 131,000 tonnes of chewing gum to Spain, only to import 125,000 tonnes back again. We send 3,300 tonnes of cuddly toys to New Zealand, only to bring another 2,400 tonnes back again. One person in the US will, by 4am in the morning of 2nd January, have been responsible for the ...

4 steps to handling emotional or conflict conversations

The four steps, when used in “self-expression” mode, work like this: To observe without evaluation, judgment, or analysis, To express feelings which these observations evoke, To express needs connected with these feelings, (optional) To make a specific request of another person to help meet an unmet need, and to enrich life of everyone involved. Essential ...

The TED Commandments – rules every speaker needs to know

Thou Shalt Not Simply Trot Out thy Usual Shtick Thou Shalt Dream a Great Dream, or Show Forth a Wondrous New Thing, Or Share Something Thou Hast Never Shared Before Thou Shalt Reveal thy Curiosity and Thy Passion Thou Shalt Tell a Story Thou Shalt Freely Comment on the Utterances of Other Speakers for the ...

Problems with paradigm change

If changes tend to happen as large paradigm shifts, then does trying to transition simply slow things down? When jumping to a new paradigm, does the new model have to be widely known before the jump, or simply known by enough people? If the existence of the old model – one which has proven to ...

Mottainai

Mottainai  is a Japanese term meaning “a sense of regret concerning waste when the intrinsic value of an object or resource is not properly utilized.” The expression “Mottainai!” can be uttered alone as an exclamation when something useful, such as food or time, is wasted. In addition to its primary sense of “wasteful,” the word ...

The one that got away

There have been lots of coincidences, serendipity, and small-world moments during these last few weeks. Exactly a week, almost to the hour, after the end of our experience chez Jimmy’s Farm, I was helping a farmer friend with a little challenge: There is a field with some cows in it. We have some hurdles. We ...

Bottled water is the answer to global warming

The world is melting. Guess what you need: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z2z2k4LoYQ The only words I can think of which would fully express my disappointment would be a hex to melt all consumers of bottled water within 2 miles of a tap. Alas, I don’t know any. Maybe the benzene will get them.

Art of the Start

The Art of Starting Make meaning Ask women Get going The Art of Positioning Seize the high ground Make it personal Niche thyself The Art of Pitching Explain in the first minute Answer the little man 10 slides Title Problem Solution Business model Underlying magic Marketing and sales Competition Team Projections Status and timeline 20 ...

EDF – Environmentally Destructive Fuckers

EDF is not green, it’s not British.  And it spends £20m on marketing Green Britain day which is more than its annual spend on investing in new green energy (source). It operates 8 nuclear power stations in the UK It is the world’s largest corporate producer of toxic nuclear waste behind the US and Canada ...

More of the most amazing thing you might see this week

Well it seems I spoke slightly too soon, since Babs has sent me some videos from The Darkroom Start with the  Darkroom event reel, and be sure, too, to check out their Projections at Kimberley.

Don't do anything that isn't play

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars and so on – whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had ...

Probably the most awesome thing you will see this week

We were fortunate enough to welcome Nell and Robin to stay with us for a few days whilst they were down in the Pyrenees a few weeks back. Robin creates some of the most awesome visual I’ve ever seen. Check these out, and then if you have the means, hire them. Epic. Battle of Branchage ...

A formula for co-operation

Coop = S x (M+C) Cooperation = Shared Commitment  x  (Mutual trust + Common interest) via  New Start

20 get rich quick schemes

Whilst I love seeing headlines like this Leaders at the G20 summit in Canada agree the richest members will halve their budget deficits within three years.  (BBC News) They beg the questions Where is all that money coming from (or not going to)? Are they going to be creating wealth and making savings (“G20 stop ...

Happy Monkeys

Pretty much everyone wise who has picked up a pen for the topic of happiness seems to agree that it lies in the simplest of pleasures, mostly coalescing around the contentment of our animal selves.