Michael L Olson's Blog (10)

I thought this project to get water kiosks up and running in the city Blantyre was a great example of not smothering people with solutions, but rather helping them take ownership and initiative with the right incentives. It demonstrates that teaching a person to 'fish' as opposed to giving them a 'fish' is much more sustainable in the long run. It creates a culture of learning and responsibility for improvement.

Read the article "An NGO's Light Touch" at…

OK, decided not to do the obvious small portable solar panel route. (Ooops!, see final note)

Instead thought I should do something I would get some benefit from, say riding my exercise bike.

So here's the solution, buy a bicycle generator that mounts to the frame

Here is what looks like a good one, Royce Union 6V ($10)…

For some quick and inexpensive ideas around generating energy, I first take to Instructables and to Make Magazine. These are not research project efforts such as microbio fuel cells, but are cheap, useable solutions, cheap at least in the U.S.A. sense.

Here are a couple that got my attention for this exercise:

1. Build a pedal pwered generator …
   
   

Well, no big stars for this one, just neighborly sensitivity.

We often find we have more food than we need or food that we would do well to offer more youthful metabolisms. So, we have a policy of providing our neighbors who have what I would expect to be ravenous teenagers extras when they occur.

Again, this action doesn't even nudge the needle in terms of significance of the intent of this food security exercise, but it has caused me to stop and think about it…

I will envision a meal for someone who is in their 70's and has certain dietary guidelines to manage blood sugar and other physical challenges of aging.

The presentation of the food takes a higher importance so the visual and smell experiences enhance the enjoyment of the meal.

The servings would be small, with the intent that one achieves an 80% feeling of being full at the end of the meail.

Vegetables predominate and are lightly seasoned and…

My bit of research on the web regarding food security in Contra Costa County, California, came up with basically a placeholder web page on the county's website. No entries, action plans, statistics, requests for help, nada. My conclusion, at the county level, there's not much energy or manpower focused on this topic. What seems to be of more interest is how some Walmart actions to buy local produce is actually effectively competing with Wh*** Foods in terms of slightly lower costs and…

In 2020 I expect to be on a farm in northern Idaho on the Coeur d'Alene reservation. I expect to see some measurable progress in sustainable agriculture practices that retain more carbon in the soil, less soil erosion, and more productivity, hopefully at lower cost. Crops include wheat, lentils, and barley. Some parcels that were cleared of pine trees fifty years ago for grain crops may be returned to suitable trees for retaining carbon. Income may well come from 'carbon capture…

In the debates on the proper global response to the risks of a warmer climate driven, in part, by green house gas emissions from human activity, I've found Bjorn Lomborg commentary and the Copenhagen Consensus reports an important addition to the discussion of costs and benefits of proposed solutions.

Social change is not easy to foster in the absence of an 'in-your-face' crisis-turned-catastrophe as opposed to being just one of many existential risks in the future that…

I think the Heath brothers highlighted a key approach as well in their observation that some complex problems, like dealing with malnourishment in Vietnam, are best addressed by looking first to see if their are examples of local solutions that can be scaled. See “Switch: Don’t Solve Problems–Copy Success”, fast company magazine, …