Links for the Week — August 26, 2006

Environment and Energy:

Buying Green: Green Home offers well-researched, environmentally-friendly (but alas, definitely not cheap) products for your home. Thanks to Craig De Ruisseau for the link.

Outsourcing Pollution: Andrew Leonard in Salon’s wonderful HTWW debunks the myth that once a nation becomes affluent it cleans up its environmental act — explaining that it’s cheaper to export the pollution to poorer nations.

Alliance for Better Food and Farming: A cornucopia of information from the UK on efforts to find a better way than toxic chemical- and additive-soaked over-processed food, unsustainable agriculture, GM frankenfoods and horrific factory farming.

The Definitive Argument Against Nuclear Power ‘Solving’ the End of Oil: The always-wonderful Irish sustainability site Feasta has it. Thanks to Scruff for the link.

Why to Live a Radically Simple Lifestyle: Ten reasons to live well within your means, housing-wise. And an explanation of the spiritual significance of Ted Trainer’s The Simpler Way of living. Thanks to David Parkinson for these links, and for the one that follows.

A Pattern Map of a Sustainable Economy: David Parkinson explains Christopher Alexander’s intriguing map: (reproduced above) “High on the gee-whiz scale. I hope that Alexander is enjoying his late-career lionization (albeit everywhere except in his main field of work, architecture, where he seems to be considered a seditious and dangerous figure). I can’t pick up a book lately about house design without seeing him cited (oddly, these books also heavily cite Le Corbusier, who is Alexander’s preferred whipping boy for the excesses of modernism). And here the idea of a collection of loosely related ‘patterns’ is being applied to sustainable society. Something in his metaphor or presentation (or optimism) seems to really inspire people trying to map out unknown territory… maybe the appeal is in the methodology, which is sloppily bottom-up & inductive, with taxonomies that emerge slowly by the accretion of specific cases, then congeal into more-or-less fixed systems over time.”

The NYT Groks Intentional Communities: Andrew Jacobs explains how 1960s-era communes have evolved into model intentional communities, and what this means for our future. Thanks to Dave Davison for the link.

Business and Complexity:

Measuring Results by Telling Stories: An interesting approach to results determination that embraces complexity is the Most Significant Change approach, which consciously percolates success and war stories up from the bottom to decision-makers. Lots more interesting stuff on this site too, which I’m adding to my business blogroll. Love the list of 8 Ways to Avoid Complexity. If you want to try out MSC, sign up here.

The Universe Keeps Getting Stranger: An interesting NYT article on new learnings about dark matter, and what we still don’t know about dark energy.

Doctors Try Self-Experimentation: The London Times reports that even the medical profession is learning that when it comes to complex systems like the human body, we’re each a unique sample of one. Thanks to Seth Roberts’ self-experimentation forum for the links (you’ll also find my self-experimentation progress reports there).

How to Make a Decision Like a Tribe: Indigenous Wisdom about decision-making in complex situations, an old but still timely article from Fast Company, via Mike Bell.

Another Book and Approach to Creating Your Own Enterprise: Pamela Slim is writing a book on how to start your own business. It’s a lot more orthodox in approach than my book The Natural Enterprise, and I don’t agree with everything she says, but we need all the books and help we can get on this subject, so brava Pamela. Thanks to David Parkinson for the link.

Robert Sapolsky Explains Why Some People Handle Stress Better Than Others: A fascinating, 80-minute-long lecture merges research on how brain cells are killed by stress with research on wild primate behaviour. Bottom line:

• Four factors predispose us to handle stress badly (i.e. get sick because of it): (a) lack of control over stressful situations (learned helplessness), (b) lack of an outlet to discharge stress (such as displacement aggression), (c) lack of predictability of stressful situations (frequency of unpleasant surprises), and (d) lack of support and other social coping mechanisms for stress.
• While low social rank correlates with poorer handling of stress, the sort of society/environment in which we live, how we personally experience stress, and our personality (temperament, sociability, adaptability, resilience — Let-Self-Changeability) correlate much more strongly.
• The traits that excellent stress managers exhibit include (a) optimism and perspective in determining the social meaning of stress situations (not overreacting), (b) ability to take the initiative and exercise self-control in coping with stress, (c) ability to assess the stress situation accurately, (d) availability of social outlets to discharge the stress, (e) affluence (as it provides access to stress management resources and assistance), and most important (f) sociality (ability and propensity to seek comfort and support with others, rather thanretreating into isolation when stress occurs).

Fascinating stuff, which, for obvious personal reasons, I’ll have more to say about later this week. Thanks to Avi Solomon for the link.

Technology:

Creating and Sharing Presentations & Graphics Online: Gliffy looks pretty cool. Thanks to Emanuel Sidea for the link.

Using Mindmapping as a Compositional Aid: A documentary filmmaker uses mindmapping software to craft a film about, ironically, the lack of innovation and creativity in the commercial music industry. Thanks to Innovation Weekly for the link.

Just for Fun:

Bulwer-Lytton 2006 Contest Winners: For worst first sentence in a novel in different genres. Absolutely hilarious. Thanks to Carroll McNeill for the link.