Ed Dowding

Category: Systems thinking

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? ...

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 ...

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 ...

Hierarchy of needs

I’m reminded by a conversation that I’ve just had that the Hierarchy of Needs is about as succint and powerful and true and psychological models get.

Good.is' most popular infographics of 2009

http://www.good.is/post/transparency-good-s-most-popular-infographics-of-2009/

Free documentaries

Does what it says on the can: http://freedocumentaries.org/

Web of mistrust

China pays 280,000 commentators to skew online conversations. Their activities were described by Chinese President Hu Jintao as “a new pattern of public-opinion guidance”.

The Postcode Paper – welcome to your neighbourhood

What a great idea, and fantastic use of liberated data: [The Postcode Paper] gathers information about your area, such as local services, environmental information and crime statistics. It’s a prototype of a service for people moving into a new area. In our exercise we imagined you might receive it after paying your council tax for ...

Quantitive psychology

I’m so glad we live in an age where people are doing large scale psychology studies, trying to discern the facts about our behaviour which our perceptions mask. This has fed into the mainstream thanks to books like Nudge and Freakonomics, and is being used politically to great effect (viz Obama). (There are fears that ...

Shiply

Shiply – matches you with rated delivery firms “going there anyway”

Israeli organ donors to get transplant priority

Israel is to become the first country to give donor card carriers a legal right to priority treatment if they should require an organ transplant. Israeli organ donors to get transplant priority, BBC News Now if they’d make it opt-out, too, they’d have the best system in the world.

How valuable are you?

I really love the work of the New Economics Foundation. It’s clear that the amount we pay people does not correspond with the amount we value them (contrast teachers with stock traders, farmers with ad. execs). The NEF has gone on to calculate the real value of different professions. The report goes on to challenge ...

Royal Mail strikes – a postie's perspective

Edited highlights from an LRB article: ‘Figures are down,’ we chortle mirthlessly, as we load the third batch of door-to-door catalogues onto our frames, adding yet more weight to our bags, and more minutes of unpaid overtime to our clock. We get paid 1.67 pence per item of unaddressed mail, an amount that hasn’t changed ...

Economist “Did you know?” 2009

YouTube – Economist “Did you know?”.

Biological lego

Thanks to Martin Anazco for linking to this video about creating custom DNA which led me to this: The Registry is a collection of ~3200 genetic parts that can be mixed and matched to build synthetic biology devices and systems. Founded in 2003 at MIT, the Registry is part of the Synthetic Biology community’s efforts ...

The World According to Monsanto

I’ve just been watching ‘The World According to Monsanto’. It’s pretty compelling stuff. As one of the contributors says, “Seed is more powerful than bombs, more powerful than guns” and given that, you’d have thought that we’d be a little more careful about what we do it. 70% of the food in the USA contains ...

Perception of time

How we consider our position in time effects our outlook on life. Much like our use of language, really. More confirmation that the world is what we perceive it to be, and very little else. As Hamlet says, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time.html

WWIII Propaganda

WWIII Propaganda

Quantum Biofeedback – giving Reiki scientific credibility

A company in Ontario has developed an Electro Physiological Frequency Xrroid (EPFX) which aims to.. well, they put it best, so: Simply put, the EPFX / SCIO is a high-tech complementary biofeedback device that assists health practitioners find stress and energetic imbalances occurring within humans and animals. […] During testing, the EPFX device resonates with ...