Thad Starner from Georgia Tech and Joseph Paradiso from MIT have calculated the amount of power that could be captured by human activity such as breathing and walking. Details can be found in their book chapter at …
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 3, 2011 at 3:07am —
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I created a dark site for Felton CA based on a template found in Google Sites. https://sites.google.com/site/feltonemergency/ provides local status and contact information, as well as links to other information.
Added by Mike Matessa on May 11, 2010 at 4:15am —
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WHICH great challenges and social problems should the EVOKE Network tackle next?
EVOKE should focus on local resiliency to peak oil, climate change, and economic instability.
WHERE in the world should the network try to build up new EVOKE communities?
From the
agent map, it seems we haven't had any Russian agents, so that would be a good area to…
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Added by Mike Matessa on May 9, 2010 at 4:30am —
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I live in Felton, CA and decided to create maps to look at the resources currently available in 2010 and how they could be improved to increase resiliency in…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 30, 2010 at 3:30am —
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The case study I looked at was
MOSSI FARMERS OF BURKINA FASO REVIVE TERRACING AND WATER HARVESTING PRACTICE. Early this century the Mossi put up lines of stones (bunds) on their cultivated land to build up terraces. Because of political instability this method was later abandoned. After a series of droughts in the 1970s,…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 22, 2010 at 12:00am —
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MoE's
HOPEPHONES project is organizing the collection of cell phones for
Hope Phones. Today I received a collection box from Hope Phones, and it looks like this:
Friendly, but generic and not descriptive of who we are and what we're trying to do. I'd like to get people's ideas…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 21, 2010 at 6:30am —
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I'm imagining four possible futures, based on David Holmgren's Future Scenarios framework. The framework considers how fast or slow oil decline interacts with destructive or benign climate change.…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 21, 2010 at 4:00am —
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The WomenWatch story I investigated was
New study shows significant drop in maternal deaths. I was curious which countries showed a higher drop and if any actually increased. I found data for 2000 at
Many Eyes and data for 2005 at…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 21, 2010 at 2:00am —
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"When all else fails... amateur radio works" is a motto of the
American Radio Relay League, the national association for amateur (ham) radio operators in the United States. How does it work? In times of disaster, telephones, cell phones, and Internet connections all have to go through many vulnerable choke points and need electric power to get a message out. Even if the system is…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 15, 2010 at 2:30am —
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I was inspired to join MoE's
HOPEPHONES mission and donate my old cellphones. I also sent away for a collection box for my community.
What happens when cellphones are donated to
hopephones.org? From the FAQ:
Phones are processed by our recycling partner, The Wireless…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 14, 2010 at 12:00am —
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For my first time using micro-loans, I decided to use Kiva to lend money to Prossy Namutebi Guzibwa.
She is a resident of Kiyunga, Uganda, and owns a retail shop which she has been operating for over six years. She is using the loan to purchase retail items such as cooking oil, books, ground nuts, soap, sugar, and salt to sell in her shop.
I also joined the Urgent EVOKE team on Kiva to help people learn about…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 7, 2010 at 3:00pm —
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The amount of information shared on EVOKE can be overwhelming. One good proposed solution is
standardized tags. I propose we also use argument maps, which are a way to organize issues (questions to be answered), ideas (alternative answers for a question), and arguments (statements that support or detract an idea or other argument). They are being used in MIT's…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 3, 2010 at 1:00pm —
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In Plan B 4.0, Lester Brown gives an example of how family size can be quickly reduced:
Increase
- In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini assumed leadership of Iran
- Khomeini dismantled well-established family planning programs and advocated large families
- Annual population growth climbed to a peak of 4.2 percent in the early 1980s
- The country's leaders faced…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 2, 2010 at 8:30pm —
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At any given moment, about half of the world's poor are suffering from waterborne disease, of which over 6,000 - mainly children - die each day by consuming unsafe drinking water. Today, more than one billion people of the world's population are without access to safe drinking water, causing lack of safe water supply to rob women and young girls of dignity, literacy and time.
Safe water interventions have vast potential to…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 1, 2010 at 11:30pm —
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eSolar is developing Concentrating Solar Power projects. This Sierra SunTower on a sunny stretch of desert in Lancaster, California is the first CSP solar tower of its kind in the United States.
eSolar has designed heliostats that are smaller than the industry norm, allowing for pre-fabrication, mass-manufacturing, and easy installation, thereby reducing production…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 1, 2010 at 11:00pm —
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The biggest challenge to local food security is sustainable food production. A current innovative solution is organic CSA. Over the last 20 years, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer. Here are the basics: a farmer offers a certain number of "shares" to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 1, 2010 at 11:00pm —
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I've been reading Our Choice by Al Gore, and I'm finding its a great overview of the issues involved in climate change. I'm shadowing Al Gore through twitter to keep up to date on his thoughts:…
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Added by Mike Matessa on April 1, 2010 at 10:30pm —
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