Friday Hope Blogging

Bruce Mau makes a good point in an interview with WorldChanging:

One of the big discussions in our project was the value of open source. I met this extraordinary guy who runs IIT in India, and he said, "You have no concept of what it means because it's inconsequential to you….You're not going to do it because there's no real incentive for you to do it. When you get to the developing world and go into India and provide free access to software, you have no idea how revolutionary that is in terms of providing tools to people that simply wouldn't have access before."

We were working at MIT the day that they put all of their coursework online. Think about what that does. A kid in India can now access everything that MIT has.

It’s very interesting to think about the extent to which considering a given change “inconsequential” is a luxury. Apropos of which, WorldChanging also has an interview with Inveneo, which builds communication stations in rural Africa:

Our Communication Stations are ultra-low-power PCs, running on Linux, requiring 12 watts of power. They can be run on solar, bicycle, wind, or other power; solar is the primary. This is important because most communities they serve are off the grid. They are very simple machines, with no moving parts, using off-the-shelf technology; they can also can be modified to add voice communication (VOIP).

New open-source tools allow ordinary people to make their own maps:

[Mark] Harrower, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is devoted to giving people powerful new tools to improve map-making. Building on his research theme of visualization and animation in cartography, Harrower has created a fleet of public domain software programs that help mapmakers with fundamental tasks such as selecting colors, filtering data, representing change and generalizing lines…. Harrower very strongly believes in making his inventions free and publicly available, rather than locking them up in an academic journal or a commercial license.

Speaking of maps, the federal government has been mapping radiological hotspots in New York’s five boroughs, in order to have a baseline reading in case of a dirty bomb detonation. It found some unexpected areas of radioactivity, including a large piece of parkland on Staten Island that has since been cordoned off from the public. Probably for the best, I’d say.

The government of Namibia is directing all institutions to heat their water with solar power:

It has been found that all Namibian households with electric geysers combined consume N$100 million worth of electricity every year. Suppose the government made it compulsory for all to use solar water heaters, the country would cut down its electricity consumption by between 15 and 20 percent.

Isn’t it odd how the American “unitary executive” claims the right to torture, but not to mandate the use of solar power?

Still, you can mandate solar power for yourself with this attractive little device:

I bought this portable solar panel from SolarStyle on eBay for $20…. With this portable solar panel, I charge my MP3 player, a portable amplifier, a set of battery-powered Sony surround sound speakers, a cellular phone, a digital camera, two LED lamps, a LED booklight, and a LED flashlight.

BushCo’s harebrained attack on the Roadless Rule has run into a wee snag:

A federal judge on Wednesday reinstated the "Roadless Rule," a Clinton-era ban on road construction in nearly a third of national forests. U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte ruled that the Bush administration failed to conduct necessary environmental studies before making changes that allowed states to decide how to manage individual national forests.

They’ve been losing a lot of these battles lately. Perhaps they’re a bit overextended at the moment? In related news, the BLM has just banned off-roading in 222 square miles of Utah’s badlands.

San Francisco has what strikes me as an effective way of educating people about rising sea levels:

Today, they launched FutureSeaLevel.org to bring the climate crisis home. It's an ingeniously simple idea: Participants tape up public spaces with a line of blue tape that marks the new sea level after unchecked global warming.

In a coastal city like San Francsico, it's a disturbing sight indeed -- the blue line cuts the urban landscape mercilessly, and you can really feel yourself going under. The project launched at Pier 39 -- tourist central here in SF -- so it's getting lots of exposure.

Richard Branson claims that he’ll spend $3 billion to fight climate change. Remarkable, if true. And if it comes to pass, you can thank Al Gore. (You can thank him for this, too.)

A group of scientists is trying to put an end to Japan’s demented, mindbogglingly sadistic annual dolphin slaughter:

[T]he ethical argument for ending the drive is supported by a solid foundation of scientific evidence indicating that dolphins possess the mental and emotional capacities for pain and suffering on a par with great apes and humans. It is also increasingly clear that dolphins have social traditions and cultures, complex interdependent relationships, and strong family ties all of which are susceptible to disruption or even dissolution in the drives.

"The scientific evidence is abundantly clear--the Japanese dolphin hunts are an assault on intelligent, sentient, and emotional beings with brains that should make us all stop and think" said Dr. Lori Marino, Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University.

I couldn’t agree more, and I hope everyone who reads this will sign their petition. Now.

Okay, now that you’re back, here are some amazing mountain panoramas by Jack Brauer (via Coudal). Click on the photos to enlarge them, and then drag the cursor to scroll over them. Italy's Monte Paterno is particularly impressive.


Also, nine months of gestation in 20 seconds, and some lovely photos of Quebec and Ontario, including "a mosaic of 50 gilt lettering apartment names from Greater Montréal" (both via Things.)


Here are some sites I've found on my own: A world survey of doorknobs. A study of Wyoming rangelands through time. Pictures from the Museum of Comparative Oology. And last but not least, Trapeze Disrobing Act, a short film from 1903.

(Photo at top by greynotgrey.)