Reem N Bsaiso's Blog – April 2010 Archive (21)

My future city is the globe.

The green earth has to be a global effort translated into national…

In the sea resort town of Aqaba, by the red sea, a relatively dry area, floods came from the mid region, across the mountains and canyons. The most affected, was the water company main piping bring water into the…

Pre setting a technology based system, like Ushaidi, is a great measure in the phase of pre-crisis, during…

Women need to be empowered and they need to sustain themselves, and their families, if they had to. Empowered women are…

Most poor families draw out their children from school, more so in industrial areas and more so for girls. In Der Zour, upper North in Syria, we started to apply our teachers training program to incorporate ICT in educaion. Computers were bought and teachers…

Perhaps a…

How do I use virtual money?

Since 2002 I have with me my e-points cards.…

One of the most amazing and creative ideas that I heard, and would like to share, came from London:

here is the scoop and the link, then my comments:

The River Thames was turned into a carpet of yellow plastic on Sunday, as 20,000 rubber ducks were raced down the waterway in London.…

Dams are one of the best options to preserver precious winter rain for long hot summer days in some countries. Or, dams are built to store water for a 'rainy' day, but one of the projects I worked on, was the K.Talal Dam, build to store water. The Zarqa river poured into the dam, passing through working camps and acc**ulating biological contaminants, and from the plants, the river collected industrial pollutants,…

I read the 25 top creative visions of the future of money. What struck me was the repletion of the word ‘trade’ it even went on to trade non-tangible artefacts, i.e. ‘favours’. It made me realize that it is the commodities, that are driven by needs control and determine the value of money. I can think of two major commodities that will determine how things run: TIME and the fight over water. What will…

http://www1.american.edu/TED/deadsea.htm

There are many links about this project, so you can google it, but ONE of the main outputs of this project is creating electricty. The idea is to use the natural elevation difference between the two seas to produce hydroelectric energy. According to this scheme, turbines would convert water into mechanical energy, which would be used to produce electricity.

It was determined that an…

In Wadi Mousa, South of Jordan, live one huge tribe called Al-Ammarin. They had good stretches of land and limited water from the wells they owned. Their dilemma was the pump that needed to work day and night to pump from the well into tanks that they can carry and irrigate. The pump was always breaking down, but the cost of fuel, was the breaking point between their profit and loss, not to mention the cost of…

OLIVE TREES: One subject comes to mind, our country is rich with olive oil trees and producing oil. The seeds are tossed away. When fuel cost rose, the farmers used to gather the seeds and use them for heat. One of the missions I organized was for an expert to explain to us a technique on how to deal with the waste material that came out of this industry. One of the…

In 2004 I volunteered to channel free technical assistance from the Netherlands to the south of Jordan. The missions were short and restricted. I, on the other hand, wanted to elevate the entire sector(s) and make a notable change. So, what did I do? I took each sector alone, car mechanics, farmers, SMEs..etc. I started…

Our fuel imports, in Jordan, exceed 5 billion $ and depicts a need for alternative sources. We are using fossil fuel to produce 90% of our energy...and to think that we have 11…

We used to get advice: not to peal an apple when we eat it. All the vitamins are in the apple peal, they said. Now, the say: peal the apple, or the cuc**ber, there are way too many carcinogenics in there.…

In Arid areas, people rely on water from rain and wells. Ignorance causes people to over-pump, salinity increases and after a while the water is no longer fit for use. From where I live, we get a lot of rain in the winter season and long hot summers and water shortage. The problem lies in…

In Aqaba (Jordan) by the Red Sea, most of the fishermen lost their jobs and trade due to recessing fishing boundaries due to political reasons. The fishermen had to join the glass-boats operators to make a living. Glass-boats take tourists to…

I worked in a project to create sustainability for reclaimed water reuse. Dry land created nomads without income. We pulled reclaimed water from water treatment plants into the desert and gave 40 farmers and their families 40 pieces of land to plant with alpha alpha. This created fast crops, fast gains, starting 2$K – 2$K / year and up to 5,000 $ or more after 3 years…