David Suzuki – Over the Horizon

isi / / Stuff that matters

Last night I saw Dr David Suzuki‘s talk “Over the Horizon – next steps for sustainable cities and the world” at Sydney’s Angel Place Recital Hall. The talk was followed by a panel discussion with Dr Tim Flannery, Head of our brand-new ClimateCouncil.org.au, Clover Moore Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney, David Ritter from Greenpeace Australia, Anna Rose, Environmentalist, wife of Simon Sheikh and Author of “It’s Getting Hot in Here“, and Alex Wyatt from Climate Bridge.

Awe-inspiring. Wish we could vote them all in a new alternative government that supports (not blocks) us citizens with running a better, healthier, sustainable Australia…

Suzuki_panel_Sydney-talks

Smart no more

isi / / General stuff

Watching my fellow humans dawdling away on all their electronic devices and doohickeys whilst developing the attention span of a fruit fly, I already had the vague feeling that us humans we’re not spinning upwards anymore… well now here’s an article by Tia Ghose @ LiveScience who had the same feeling, and investigated it…

Humans may be gradually losing intelligence, according to a new study.

The study, published in the journal Trends in Genetics, argues that humans lost the evolutionary pressure to be smart once we started living in dense agricultural settlements several thousand years ago.

“The development of our intellectual abilities and the optimization of thousands of intelligence genes probably occurred in relatively non-verbal, dispersed groups of peoples [living] before our ancestors emerged from Africa,” said study author Gerald Crabtree, a researcher at Stanford University, in a statement.

Since then it’s all been downhill, Crabtree contends…

Read the whole article here http://www.livescience.com/24713-humans-losing-intelligence.html

Lets hope it’s over…

isi / / Stuff that matters

“My gut feeling is the big expansion of coal in India is not going to happen, and they are going to leapfrog into renewables.” – Tim Flannery

Taken from “Coal? It’s Over” by Mike Seccombe – A great read about Australia’s insane/reckless fixation on fossil fuels.
View the whole article here @ The Global Mail

Robin Hood Tax

isi / / Stuff that matters

:: 2013 update – http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/latest/dont-believe-hype-robin-hood-tax-alive-and-kicking ::

A rockin good idea. Sure not easy to roll out, and in danger of being ‘hijacked’ at some point, or see inflated overheads, but still a beautiful (and just) idea.

Go and vote YES 🙂

Why now?

Because the time is right.

From 2007 to present the world is suffering the greatest recession since World War I that is caused by a crash in the financial system. There is global agreement that we need to regulate finance so it cannot crash in the same way again, even if there are different views about how to do this. But the finance sector can – and should – make a proper tax contribution towards putting right the damage it caused and making the world a better, fairer, more sustainable place.

Computerisation of the finance sector has made a tax like this easy to implement. What’s more, it’s made it necessary – the very speed of today’s financial systems is a direct contributor to the surge in global trading. Nowadays, too much trading is done to make a quick profit, and not to serve the real economy. This high frequency trading has brought instability.

read more here http://robinhoodtax.org.au

Occupy the seed!

isi / / Stuff that matters

Last Friday I went to a talk in Redfern, with Costas and the creators of the Seed Saver’s Network, Jude and Michel Fenton. The evening was real eye opener. The Seed Savers’ Network was established in 1986 to preserve local varieties of useful plants. Have a read about their fascinating story on their website www.seedsavers.net

Here is Costa’s interview with Dr Vandana Shiva, my favorite activist and campaigner. Find out more about her work on her blog www.navdanya.org

About peanuts and monkeys

isi / / General stuff

A little story for them who haven’t yet grasped the actual meaning of Schadenfreude:

I’m a Sydney based web producer. Last week I was told that a former client got a “great cheap website deal from overseas.” I was not impressed.
But now this client’s website is down ever since the ‘great deal’ eventuated. Their website is now down for more than a week [update: 2 weeks now].

Schadenfreude is the word that describes best my current state of mind about the whole situation – I just can’t help it.

As you know, there is a saying about how to secure quality services for your business…

the age of

isi / / Stuff that matters

The most important subject taught to school children is rapidly becoming computer science and applications: How to use machines instead of brains, programs instead of knowledge.

Ray Kurzweil – THE AGE OF INTELLIGENT MACHINES | The Age of Intelligent People

What will that do to our N-Geners? Will it impact their capacity for empathy and compassion?