Sam Osborne's Blog – April 2010 Archive (14)

My fiancee and I are trying out an alternative currency to keep track of our chores and divide the labor. At the end of the week we can 'bank' our notes or 'buy' them out of the system with US dollars so we don't have deal with inflation. The money has to first buy supplies, so basically if you don't supply a good or a service (working around the house, dinner, dishes, etc.) you'll wind up buying the cleaning supplies and possibly paying the other person (a pittance, it's mostly a symbolic… Continue

...and the Future of Civilization", by Thomas Greco, Jr. is a fantastic book. Within its 200 some pages you'll find both the problems to our modern money system and Greco's proposed solution(s) which is primarily the idea of mutual credit, or credit clearing - where we generate the money in the system with the goods and services that we provide to the system, and investment occurs as a… Continue

World water day 2020 celebrates the third anniversary of the entire world having access to clean water. Melting polar ice has led to higher sea levels, but this has offset the slowly increasing levels of salt from desalinization plants around the globe. Utilizing an efficient black water purification system, grey water irrigation, natural filtration, widespread distillation technology and solar purification coupled with a widespread water awareness and conservation ideology - less is… Continue

http://www.cityofmadison.com/water/doc**ents/EBMUDwatersmartguidebook.pdf Continue

http://launch.org/presentations/view/5/subsurface-vapor-transfer-irrigation

It's all falling into place. Continue

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http://www.dlightdesign.com/about_leadership.php Continue

Whether it's from mine, or if I'm on the road staying with peers and friends, March 10, 2020 I'll be dining on food that is grown in the region I'm in. I hope to be bouncing around the world by then, so I couldn't say for sure where, but I believe that urban agriculture is the future, and that the open exchange of the produce will produce strong communities - I hope to be having dinner in one of those.

This was intense. I started with bewilderment - it seemed like there were so many possibilities, though nothing specific leapt straight to mind for me. Continue

The Dane County Farmer's Market is an absolutely incredible experience - it is the largest "producer-only farmer's market" in the country. "FoodShare" cards are accepted at the farmer's market, which I think is brilliant - it is like the anti-subsidy - the government winds up paying the farmers so people who wouldn't have access to good food, do. Continue

Best case scenario, I'm living my dream - traveling the country on a lecture tour but getting my hands as dirty as possible, promoting and working with organic farmers around the world as an effort to promote positive, shared values between cultural and religious groups. I see myself speaking with American audiences, but also doing much of my work around the south coast of the Mediterranean and taking regular trips to Europe.

I'm tagging Gavin Newsom as my social innovator to shadow. He's the Mayor of San Francisco and he's running for Lieutenant governor of California - he's fairly easy to follow. Continue

I really like #4 on Amy Smith's list of "rules for design in the developing world," "create transparent technologies." Continue