Saturday Links of the Week — February 9, 2008

and you thought you had a lot of snow…Kevin Cameron’s recent photo of snow in Japan.

Love Conversation Community

What Do We Want From Love?: My Second Life partner-in-crime Mia asks whether what men and women expect and demand from love is different, and if that affects how they relate in community.

And Do We Know What We Want at All?: Patti Digh brilliantly suggests that as important as it is to ask for what we want, to strive for what we want, the snag is often that we really don’t know what that is. 37days is now officially my favourite blog in the world.

Defining Friendship, or Not: Pohangina Pete McGregor plays a bit with us, after promising to define or explain what friendship means to him. But in the end, as always, he delivers. His prose is pure poetry, and his photography is divine. Show, don’t tell.

Business Innovation

Innovation Book Now Free: Frans Johansson’s book The Medici Effect, on how innovation happens at intersections, which I’ve review on this blog, is now available for free download.

Environment

We Have to Think Differently About the Environment: An interesting report says political activism won’t save the environment, that it will take a whole new (or old) way of thinking. Sharon Astyk says we should follow the ‘church model’ (engaging the community) of activism (thanks to David Parkinson for the link). And one enviro community, FactorE Farm, has developed an ‘open source’ clay brick maker that could make environmentally responsible building more affordable.

Most Biofuels Use More Energy Than They Produce: Meanwhile, two new studies reveal the corn ethanol craze for the corporatist scam it really is.

Don’t Watch This Video: Institutional animal abuse is endemic in Big Ag oligopoly factory farms, with the complicity of the Bush regime and the impotent USDA,but the infamous video at least is waking up some people to this atrocity. Please don’t watch it; the article tells you all you need to know.

Politics

Afghan Insanity: Canada continues to risk its soldiers’ lives to prop up a corrupt, torturing misogynist Afghan regime. A journalist is about to be executed there by the government for questioning the fundamentalists’ view of marriage.

Clinton’s Health Plan More Inclusive Than Obama’s: That’s the only real difference in platforms between them that I can see. Of course neither plan is likely to make it through the corpocratic US blockades.

1 Response to Saturday Links of the Week — February 9, 2008

Barbara W. Klaser says:

February 10, 2008 at 19:36

The mindset we have to nurture in order to save the environment is one of frugality, in what we buy, and in reusing old things. In manufacturing things to last, if they need to last, and to be recyclable at end of life. In manufacturing things be completely, safely, and rapidly biodegradable if they’re not meant to last. Perhaps if we could resurrect some Craftsman era and Depression era ideals and update them to serve the environment, that would help.As far as motivation, people seem to need community and even legislation to motivate them, rather than the other way around. Just as people started using seat belts more, once they were required by law, curbside recycling, in my region, changed a lot of people’s personal practices dramatically, in ways that information alone never did. A much-reduced income also changed my purchases and what I throw out in ways that information and my green motivation never did. I’m not proud of that, but there it is. I had to be forced into some changes, because they weren’t convenient or desirable for me. One big part of that was a desire to fit in and have the latest things.If we could make frugality culturally popular and desirable again, and keep it that way, I think it would work wonders. What has happened instead is that consumerism has spread to parts of the world where frugality used to be a way of life. It doesn’t help that, as you say, my (US) government is now so Corporocratic. And no, that does not bode well for any hope of a new health care system, under any President. Not when nearly every legislator seems to have sold his or her soul to the highest bidder. I guess we need to make selling out culturally undesirable again too.