Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.

Mark Mulkerin's Blog (28)

Once again, the plague years

SARS, H1N1, bird flu, dengue, the list goes on. Living in a large city in Asia (Singapore), epidemics and pandemics are the biggest things I worry about ... of course, that could come from living through SARS in Hong Kong a few years back.


So how do you survive in a city gripped by concerns about plague (SARS, bird flu, etc.)?


First, remind yourself of the numbers. As tragic as SARS was for families effected and as big as the numbers appeared -…
Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on April 22, 2010 at 2:47am — 1 Comment

The Things We've Lost

2067 - Geez, I'm old. The little ones gather around. I gave the talk to their parents before them, maybe even their grandparents. Of course, there were fewer pictures then. More of the world and its inhabitants untouched by our mistakes.


I begin as I always do with Ozymandias -


I met a traveller…
Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on April 22, 2010 at 1:36am — 3 Comments

The Second Bank of Evoke - Where Currency has no Currency

Okay friends and neighbors, we committed a grievous act over at the First Bank of Evoke and started (gasp) sharing jokes, poems, and such without exchanging EVs. To prevent such anarchy from undermining the capitalist principles of said bank, we are opening the Second Bank of Evoke.


Think of it as literary freecycling - so feel free to deposit or drop off your old poems, jokes, artwork, whatever for another agent to come across and take "home" with them. Frankly, you can't…
Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on April 10, 2010 at 3:46pm — 34 Comments

Seeking technical advise on EVOKATION

Synopsis: Increasingly academic institutions, governments, nonprofits, and individuals are putting out high quality, free educational material for students from kindergarten to college; however, it can take a great bit of digging and searching to find it even for someone who is web literate. To increase the availability of educational opportunities for anyone with internet access, I hope to create a site through which volunteers can add and index educational resources creating a easy to use… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on April 8, 2010 at 2:35pm — No Comments

Free Education, Freeing Education ...

It had begun so simply. Too many years working in libraries colliding in my head with this wh*** new open source education idea. Perhaps it has always been naive of me to believe that the right lever could move the world, but the right book in the right hands could make a huge difference. The website did okay. And perhaps the team that put together the later version had seen mine first or heard about it. And the things that happened then.


Perhaps what really made the…
Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on April 8, 2010 at 6:01am — 1 Comment

The Pwoje Fanm or "Women’s Projects”

For my act this week, I want to share my sister-in-law, Sandra, with Evoke. A few years back, she and other members of her church in Arkansas began a partnership with the Pwoje Fanm women’s vocational program on the island of La Gonâve in Haiti. In addition to offering financial assistance, crafting expertise (from beading to quilting and beyond), and friendship,… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on April 8, 2010 at 2:46am — 4 Comments

Imagine a milk carton ...

with the face of a young girl from India, China, or Pakistan. Only one word is beneath her picture. Missing. No name. No contact details. No plea for help. She wasn't wanted in the first place.


Now add 99,999,999 milk cartons to the row. A girl looks out from each. Nameless. Missing and presumed dead. A hundred million of them.


Okay, estimates are estimates. Nobody has counted, but based on the work of Economics Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen, and…
Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on April 8, 2010 at 1:30am — 10 Comments

Utopian visions or a little less bad? Idealism versus realism?

In the last few days, Evoke has been making me feel like I'm part of Raphael's School of Athens with Plato and Aristotle arguing in the center over idealism versus realism. Plato points towards the heavens and in that gesture he incorporates his entire view, his belief that a perfect society could be created, that perfect knowledge could be had. Aristotle, his former student, points to the ground and towards a way of knowing and acting in the world that comes from experience. I'm in Aristotle's… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on April 6, 2010 at 11:31pm — 15 Comments

The First Bank of Evoke

As any economist will insist, economic behavior is about allocating limited resources - limited resources including giving your fellow Agents a hand with this or that aspect of preparing their Evokation or some other aspect of their involvement on Evoke. To that end and to promote the exchange of goods and services among Evoke Agents (strictly within the Terms of Service), I'd like to invite interested parties to step forward and bank some Evokians to make this market… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on April 1, 2010 at 4:16pm — 86 Comments

Take it slow!

Around the world money sloshes through stock markets and banks and businesses crashing like waves upon shore as get rich investors swim in massive schools following the tail in front of them into the mouth of a shark or onto the rocks. Anyone in finance honest enough will tell you that it is all fear and greed and with technology and globalization and open capital markets, the world's monetary system has the perpetual jitters like an air traffic control working a triple shift on a holiday… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on April 1, 2010 at 7:16am — 6 Comments

Sometimes social innovation takes a village ...

With almost ten thousand files uploaded and over twenty two thousand pages, I encourage anyone with an interest in appropriate technologies for local solutions to various challenges to look at Appropedia, http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia.



In their own words - "Appropedia is the site for collaborative solutions in sustainability,… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on March 31, 2010 at 2:53am — 2 Comments

Water Day 2020

Fun? Alchemy wants something fun? In the Himalayas, China, India, and Pakistan have armies staring at each other over dwindling ice fields. The high plains in the US are in the process of drying up and blowing away. In monsoon prone cities from Manila to Mumbai, residents have taken to putting boats on their roofs for the inevitable flooding. OPEC has been replaced by the Organization of Water Exporting Countries. And the dwindling few with enough money and self-delusion are still buying… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on March 27, 2010 at 12:33am — 8 Comments

Write your legislature - get rid of Use it or Lose it water rights in the Western US (or elsewhere)

There are lots of water issues and lots of craziness around water, but as someone interested in sustainable agriculture one drives me particularly nuts. For the most part in the Western United States, water use law is a complex patchwork of competing water rights. While it seems unlikely and even unfair to take water rights away from a farmer or others as they have economic value and would destroy livelihoods, the practice of use it or lose it as enshrined in various states including where I… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on March 26, 2010 at 2:03am — No Comments

Catch the rain

Sure, there are so many great emerging water technologies - drip irrigation and conservation tillage, hippodrums making it easier to retrieve water, recharging aquifers with excess rain, grey water systems, saltwater adapted crops, life straws, desalinization plants, solar and ceramic water purifiers, and many more. Yet my choice is the humble rain barrel?



Where is the innovation in that?



Awareness. How would your water use change, if you could see your supply rise and fall… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on March 25, 2010 at 4:10am — 3 Comments

Regulation or self-regulation - codes of ethics for Evoke?

As some may know, I've been playing devil's advocate in Jen Shaffer's conversation provoking blog, Conflict in my Evoke?. I've shared some of my views on why I think regulating away "gaming the system" or competition doesn't work for me in the comments of that blog; however, at Amos Meeks' suggestion, I'm going to spin off one of my thoughts into a new blog -… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on March 24, 2010 at 3:44pm — 12 Comments

My wife is a tea drinker

We are pretty energy aware to begin with. We turn off lights when we leave the room. We leave in the tropics, but almost always use just the fans. We bought energy efficient appliances. We even boil my wife's water for tea or coffee in the electric kettle rather than do it on the stove and then put any extra in a thermos to keep it hot.



What more can we do? As the song says, PAINT IT BLACK! Okay, I'm not going to paint the electric kettle black or the thermos since that would be… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on March 23, 2010 at 1:18pm — No Comments

Piezomatic - it doesn't slice, it doesn't dice, but it generates electricity when you do

Okay, okay, I should be getting ready for Christmas, but the shopping channel is the shopping channel and I don't have gifts for everyone. The big thing this year is piezoelectric everything since a certain organization that we won't talk about made the break through in cost and materials. So I'm watching this guy who is disturbing on about eighty different levels and he has these little sticker things placed randomly about his body. I want to change the channel or pluck my eyes out, but… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on March 22, 2010 at 8:32am — 4 Comments

some winter greens ...

"Alchemy called. Tokyo," I said as I rinsed the winter greens. I shook them off.



"How bad is it?" asks K, my sixteen year old daughter as she runs the knife over the steel to true the edge.





"Bad enough that Alchemy called ... people expect food shortages in… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on March 21, 2010 at 4:42pm — 3 Comments

a poem from a few years ago - Hunter Gatherer

Hunter Gatherer



Old woman pushes slowly down the aisle

gathering the night's scroungings.

Her hands, scuffed,

cracked as kitchen linoleum,

roam over tender tomatoes,

probe eggplants for hidden softness,

heft potato and onion, know their weight.



Once, she owned the secret of seasons -

the two weeks, peaches would explode on her tongue,

the rhythm of rutabaga, radishes.



She pauses at the apples, picks one,

holds it near as if learning… Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on March 21, 2010 at 12:47am — 1 Comment

a poem from a few years ago - American Dreams



American Dreams





Frozen, blank concrete won't hold his words;

even his mind no longer hears him,

only receives the slur of an…

Continue

Added by Mark Mulkerin on March 21, 2010 at 12:33am — 1 Comment

Latest Activity

Ning Admin is now a member of Urgent Evoke
May 17, 2023
N updated their profile
Sep 25, 2020
Sophie C. commented on Asger Jon Vistisen's blog post Stinging Nettle
"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
Aug 19, 2020
Meghan Mulvey posted a blog post

Fourth of July on the Lake

This past weekend was the annual celebration at the lake house in Connecticut. It is amazing that the lake is still so clear and beautiful after all these years. The watershed association has done a wonderful job protecting these waters from the damaging effects of development.The wood grill was finally ready to cook on, so we didn't miss the propane tank fueled grill anymore. The food actually tasted fresher than in the past and was easy to keep fueled.Dad was very proud of the solar hybrid…See More
Jul 6, 2020
Asger Jon Vistisen posted a blog post

Stinging Nettle

In this blog post I will focus on a plant that is abundant in our nature, and which is immensely nutritious. It's of course the Stinging Nettle. Let's start with the chemical constituents of this plant:37 % Non-Nitrogen-Extracts19 - 29 % Ash9 - 21 % Fiber4 % Fat22 % ProteinOnce the leaves are drid, their protein content can reach an astounding 40 %, which is much higher than beef, which even under the best of circ**stances can never exceed 31 % protein. In addition the Stinging Nettle consists…See More
Apr 13, 2020
Jonathon McCallum posted a blog post

The meal

It is 7'oclock, I was late home from work due to an assignment that i wanted to get ahead on. By the time I get home I am feeling extremley tired and I cannot be bothered to make a proper meal. I walk to the fridge and open it to see what there is for me to eat. All of the out of date foodstuffs have been automaticaly thrown away by the fridge, they will be recycled tomorrow as animal feed or something. I see i have organic local eggs and some local cheese. Foods are vacc** sealded for easy…See More
Mar 10, 2020
Jean Paul Galea shared a profile on Facebook
Mar 1, 2020
Kevin posted a blog post

Future

FutureToday is 2020/1/1. It is just like yesterday. The war is still continuing. It has started since 2010. In 2010, that year was a horrible year. Almost every energy ran out. Every country’s governments were crushed down at the same time. There were riots everywhere. All of the big company’s bosses were killed xdeadx in the riots. Troops fought each other everywhere. Food was bought up xawayx at once. There were no more food supplies in any shops. The economy was all crushed down. All the…See More
Jan 1, 2020
Namwaka Mooto posted blog posts
Jan 13, 2016
T D updated their profile
Sep 3, 2015
Brook Warner posted blog posts
Aug 25, 2015
Santiago Vega posted blog posts
May 5, 2015
Santiago Vega commented on Santiago Vega's blog post Act 8
May 5, 2015
Santiago Vega posted photos
May 5, 2015
Rico Angel Rodriguez posted blog posts
May 2, 2015
Rico Angel Rodriguez posted a photo

public servants

The exchange works directly for state and public workers and servants. It gives them credit in exchange for the amount of public work they contribute to the community. The more constructive they are based off a base rate the more credit they recieve.
May 2, 2015

Follow EVOKE on Twitter




Official EVOKE Facebook Page




EVOKE RSS Activity Feed










© 2024   Created by Alchemy.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service