Mike Matessa's Blog – April 2010 Archive (14)

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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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,… Continue

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: Continue

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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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… Continue

"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… Continue

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. Continue

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… Continue

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… Continue

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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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… Continue

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:… Continue