This might be kind of a trick since I've used this alternative exchange system for years now... but I just think it`s important to share and those years have helped me to know this exchange system actually works!!!!
This can be called a "local" karma system but basically the systems works this way:
Help everyone so you'll get help when you need it!!!
I think the system needs no further…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on May 9, 2010 at 3:12am —
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People try to fix economy with new ways of getting money... but what if we think outside of the box? what if money is the problem?
Money is just a way to evaluate and interchange the value of thinks. As good as that is if we have a good price allocation system (so if we can correctly evaluate the value of things and set it as a price) the true is that many (all?) of all the important things can`t be correctly priced. What's the value of clean water? of life? of…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on May 9, 2010 at 2:54am —
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The amount of water globally is pretty much fixed, yet, at a local level, water supply is affected by several environmental conditions as weather, vegetation, orography, etc. While we can't do much to change most of them, vegetation is one we can modify which can increase local water supply. I found this text about this kind of
environmental services from forest:
Forests and Water Linkages
Water in…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on April 12, 2010 at 5:30am —
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For this mission I remembered a friend who told me that worked in water issues, so I went to his facebook, got the webpage of Water and Youth and got there. I was surprised to see that it´s a social network, so I joined it and I'm starting to get to use it. I'm not really sure how much I can do there, but I already started a group about Environmental Services and Water which I believe is an important issue. Hope to get some discussion about this there (and maybe also here =P) so feel free to…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on April 10, 2010 at 6:00am —
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Evaporation is a great way to clean the water. The problem is that it consumes a lot of energy. There are several designs to use solar energy to use this. Despite being slow, I found this method to do it easily and cheap:
Solar Still -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_stillThe basic idea is to put a plastic sheet over a h*** in the soil. Soil's humidity gets evaporated by the heat…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on April 10, 2010 at 3:58am —
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It's 21th March, 2020. A strong wind blows as the 1st year celebration of the Wind building is taking place. A very innovative building build in the Baja California's Cost where a great beach was crowned with one of the most environmental friendly buildings in the world
This tall building was called Wind because all its energy needs were solved with wind. To do that the designers took advantage of its big size: 120 floors and 9 blocks of base it´s a lot of space!
The…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 25, 2010 at 7:58am —
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So I kept thinking about the
saving some heat for later idea which was basically to save the heat from something you want to cool down (like a hot soup or coffee) to use it later to warm up something else (let's say your dinner). You just need something that stores heat (something with high calorific coefficient) and a thermally isolated bag (to save it). This seems easy to design, yet the amount of energy you save…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 23, 2010 at 6:56am —
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Okay, I'm not completely sure how to do this, but I got an idea today while eating.
As I was sitting waiting for my soup and my tea to cool a little I notice that I was just letting some energy go. I mean I really wanted to cool my soup and my tea but I had not better way than let that energy warm the air. Yet I knew that later on I would want to warm something for dinner. So it would be great if I could take the heat from the soup and save it to use it to warm my dinner. I thought…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 23, 2010 at 6:03am —
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Free the Children (
http://www.freethechildren.com/) was founded by my hero Craig Kielburger (
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=10150131340630083&topic=13911#!/craigkielburger) in 1995 at the age of 12. At that point he gathered 11 school friends to start fighting children labor.
Now Free the Children has build more than 500…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 21, 2010 at 11:09pm —
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Following my post
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/food-security-in-mexico-1-its I found an interesting new about the costs of obesity for the health system in Mexico:
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/666157.html?awesm=fbshare.me_AK2BS. It's in Spanish so I'll translate some key facts:
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 21, 2010 at 9:52pm —
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For this post I'm sharing the project of Victor Berrueta, my uncle. He's been working with indigenous groups all over Mexico for as long as I remember. He did his master helping Mayan indigenous groups in Chiapas to have a solar drier for coffee which improved their food production.
Now, he's still working in the project he did his PhD on: Patsari Stoves.
The problem: Many indigenous groups still cook using a fire inside their houses. The way they do it wastes a lot of wood…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 21, 2010 at 5:30pm —
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I've never understood why most of the plants in public spaces (parks, streets, etc.) are not edible. In a country where beggars are everywhere in the big cities and where weather is so good you don't really need to much care like Mexico. Why not plant edible foods in public spaces and let the people eat them at pleasure.
Does anyone know a place where this happens?
Added by Sayel Cortes on March 21, 2010 at 4:03pm —
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From the learning part of mission 3 (
http://blog.urgentevoke.net/2010/03/17/investigate-episode-3/) it seams that having electricity is a basic need to everyone. As much as electricity can bring great improvements in everyone's life (refrigeration, higher productivity, safety by public illumination, etc.) it also brings a lot of distractions (tv mainly).
So I wonder if electricity is really one of the most…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 20, 2010 at 10:30pm —
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I was reading a great blog post about making a real life team to do education programs around the world, starting with Sierra Leone (
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/evokation-seed-the-outline?xg_source=activity) that made me think about how much we can influence abroad and whether this is ethic or not.
World Bank and IMF have been criticized for using a the same set of…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 20, 2010 at 6:33pm —
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Mexico is a privileged country. A huge part of it have such a great weather that you could plant food all the year around. Only a few areas in Mexico get snow and most of them are in high mountain areas where few people live. Yet we have a great monster messing with our food culture: Big companies. And their most feared weapons: junk food and transgenics are really messing with us =/
Mexico is now the 2nd fattest nation around, and I heard we're ranked 1 in kids obesity. The problem is…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 16, 2010 at 4:10am —
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How much does the world actually want to change in 10 years?
It's middle of march 2020. As I walk out of my room in our sustainable community I can smell the multiple aromas of our community garden/farm. Bugs are flying around but I'm not scare of them as I know they're important to keep our local micro-ecosistem going. I get to the dinning terrace where a few of my friends are already chatting. We are all part of a vegetarian community where we work "outside in the world" part time…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 16, 2010 at 3:23am —
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This is a response to Cian's network challenge: MASTERPIECE
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/network-challenge-masterpieceIt's hard to decide which is our masterpiece, every little thing we do is important. Yet one of the things I've done and I liked the most is the follow...
It was early in 2007 when I invited some friends to my house to discuss environmental topics. We all…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 14, 2010 at 10:37pm —
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There has been a lot of interest discussion about urban farms. Inspired by Patricio's NEXT STEP post (
http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/next-step-community-urban-1)
I thought in a way to start doing a network of urban farmers that could grow exponentially. I think the key success is to make a flexible structure were all the members of the network keep it going and just a few people…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 14, 2010 at 9:50pm —
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I was an exchange student in Austin, Tx the last semester of my master and my roomie worked for the Sustainable Food Center. After reading several posts about ways to tackle hunger I want to share what that organization does which I believe is a great thing!
Sustainable Food Center (SFC).
http://www.sustainablefoodcenter.org/From seed to table, SFC creates opportunities for individuals to…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 12, 2010 at 2:17am —
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My best case scenario in 10 years is definitely having fun doing what I love: help the people.
I truly believe in sustainable development and I think one of the main tools to achieve it are comunal urban agriculture. So in 2020 I picture myself traveling around the world promoting these kind of projects. I would picture myself coordinating people in the communities all over the globe, managing a big organization supporting those communities and making sure knowledge and experiences…
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Added by Sayel Cortes on March 10, 2010 at 7:32am —
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