There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he is absolutely free to choose. (William M. Bulger)
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Sweet Seals For You, Always

pixel skylines
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
trying on a metaphor

PR's Tumblrdome
$LAYYYTER


⁂
Claire Keane
occasionally subtle

#extradirty
Mike Driver
Keni
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

★
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
DEAR READER
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@planet-earned
There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he is absolutely free to choose. (William M. Bulger)

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The first time I truly used a networked computer I saw it as the way out. Instead of being enslaved to big corporations—as employees and consumers—we’d be able to work on our own time, create value directly for other networked people, and get out of the obligatory, expansionist race against the debt clock that was destroying our planet.
But once WIRED and the other technology business folks got wind of the coming digital age, they framed it quite differently. No, digital technology wouldn’t liberate us from the values of the Industrial Age; it would amplify them! Instead of letting NASDAQ deflate and die its natural death, we could use the promise of the dotcom era and the “long boom” of infinite expansion to pump some more steroids in there.
To them, the digital age wasn’t something that was here, but something that was coming. Something to prepare for. Something to invest in.
And that’s when I started to hate futurists. Here we were already in possession of the things we needed to break free of the corrupting cycles of corporate culture—and yet we were now supposed to see them as the basis for a whole new stage of venture capitalism. All a company needed to do is hire one of the TED-talk-like digital luminaries to imagine a new scenario through which the same old banks and corporations could keep on growing.
But the promise of a digital age, as I see it, is just the opposite: We can retrieve the values and modalities submerged by the birth of the corporation and central currency. Instead of building our entire economy on debt-based money—money with a ticking clock inside it—we can begin to exchange goods and services with one another in real time.
We can even wake up to the fact that—thanks largely to technology—we already have more than enough stuff to go around. We are destroying houses and burning food to keep the market prices high. Unemployment shouldn’t be seen as a problem but as a goal. Who wants a job, anyway? I just want the stuff.
Sure, I am happy to work, but not simply as an excuse to keep an economic system in place that was much better at growing colonial empires than it is at creating sustainable solutions to problems in the present tense.
Time is not money. It’s the way human beings move through this thing called life. If we can bring ourselves to consider the ways digital technology can make time rather than simply take more of it, we will be in a position to live for a better today, right now.
***
Douglas Rushkoff is the author of the just-released Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now Penguin/Current
Peru Passes Monumental Ten Year Ban on Genetically Engineered Foods
Peru has officially passed a law banning genetically modified ingredients anywhere within the country for the next ten years
In a massive blow to multinational agribiz corporations such as Monsanto, Bayer, and Dow, Peru has officially passed a law banning genetically modified ingredients anywhere within the country for a full decade before coming up for another review. Peru’s Plenary Session of the Congress made the decision 3 years after the decree was written despite previous governmental pushes for GM legalization due largely to the pressure from farmers that together form the Parque de la Papa in Cusco, a farming community of 6,000 people that represent six communities.
They worry the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will compromise the native species of Peru, such as the giant white corn, purple corn and, of course, the famous species of Peruvian potatoes. Anibal Huerta, President of Peru’s Agrarian Commission, said the ban was needed to prevent the ”danger that can arise from the use of biotechnology.” While the ban will curb the planting and importation of GMOs in the country, a test conducted by the Peruvian Association of Consumers and Users (ASPEC) at the time of the ban’s implementation found that 77 percent of supermarket products tested contained GM contaminants. ”Research by ASPEC confirms something that Peruvians knew all along: GM foods are on the shelves of our markets and wineries, and consumers buy them and take them into their homes to eat without knowing it. Nobody tells us, no one says anything, which involves a clear violation of our right to information,” Cáceres told Gestión. GMOs are so prevalent in the Americas that it is virtually impossible to truly and completely block them, whether through pollination or being sneaked in as processed foods.
“There is an increasing consensus among consumers that they want safe, local, organic fresh food and that they want the environment and wildlife to be protected,” wrote Walter Pengue from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, in a recent statement concerning GMOs in South America. “South American countries must proceed with a broader evaluation of their original agricultural policies and practices using the precautionary principle.” Note: This decree was signed into effect on April 15th 2011
Going green when it’s your time to go From biodegradable coffins to tree-sprouting urns, eco-friendly burials offer a way for those who live green to also die green.

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IS THIS ANOTHER SHELL GREENWASHING OR NOT ?
Previous SHELL SCAMS can be found here
To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.
Leonard Bernstein. (via coolz0r)
Destroy to produce, consume to destroy. A sick circle indeed. Give a shit about nature !
A very cool Facebook group => so FOLLOW !
(via Visualizing The Importance Of Rare Earth Elements To Our Digital Lifestyle | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation)
Child Focus is creative with 404 error pages
Check out these examples !
www.nieuwsblad.be/idgsdfofjh
www.lavenir.net/sdfuhgdf
www.standaard.be/uoygsdfyvg

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Getting Around: ‘Good Bicycle Karma’ (Video)
Here’s a fun, simple, and low cost idea to encourage smart and safe cycling in cities. Copenhagen’s ‘Karmaspotters’ walk the streets of the city giving out good karma presents to cyclists who are being considerate while biking around the city.
(Source: Cycling Embassy of Denmark)
Related:
‘When the Bad Guys Ride Bikes’ (Atlantic Cities)
Park Hill Estate in Sheffield, before and after.
I know some neighboorhoods in Belgium that can use a make over !
Advice from the city. Good advice!
A team of social scientists, led by Matthew Nisbet at American University American University, have found that people who are indifferent, or even hostile, to climate change are more receptive to the issue when it’s talked about as a health issue.
Social Enterprise should be made central to higher education strategy
Publié le 31 août 2012
When I went to university in the late 1970s, fewer than 20% of school leavers went on to higher education. Some degrees were clearly vocational (medicine perhaps the most obvious example), but most were not. My module on the Comparative Government of Indonesia and Nigeria has not, I’m afraid to say, been of direct relevance to me in the world of work.
However, a degree did give graduates an experience that most of their contemporaries did not have and with that experience some unique opportunities. The ‘Milk Round’ university recruiting fairs, run by large often blue-chip organisations, offered a route into management that was by and large exclusive to graduates.
Wind forward 35 years and the Milk Round is no more. The UK now has 50% of school leavers going on to universities to do a degree, competition for graduate level jobs has hugely increased and, significantly, universities are now measured and compared on the number of their graduates that get ‘graduate level’ jobs. However, employer organisations, including the CBI, regularly criticise universities for failing to give students the skills they need to operate in the world of work.
In response to this criticism, UK universities have developed a series of initiatives to ensure that the ‘student experience‘ – both in degree courses run and extra-curricular opportunities provided – give students the competencies that employers want. Compared with the late 1970s, employability is now a strong feature of nearly all degree courses.
There has also been a dramatic rise in the number of enterprise clubs or societies, often run by students themselves, providing comprehensive support to help students start their own businesses. In the East Midlands, the Enterprise Inc. scheme run across nine universities, even provides funding to would-be entrepreneurs.
The opportunities for social enterprise
The public sector in the UK is going through a decade of transformation. Irrespective of which party is in power, the way services have been delivered to the public has been changing, and will continue to change. It is becoming clear that we have been living in a fools’ paradise, treating ourselves to ever more public services that we have not been able to afford.
At the same time, the UK private sector is also experiencing severe shocks to its system. Although the private sector has delivered some impressive growth in employment opportunities, the European – US financial crisis and the exposure of many banking practices, is bringing the fundamentals of the economy into question (and we saw it coming – or should have – if you want to know why read Niall Ferguson’s book The Ascent of Money, especially chapter six).
These tectonic shifts in the economy have created new opportunities for the UK’s long-established social enterprise sector. All mainstream political parties in the UK are voicing support for a more mixed economy, with a strong social enterprise sector delivering products and services in innovative and responsible ways. Legislation has been passed to support the sector and attitudes and practices are changing (albeit rather too slowly for many social entrepreneurs). Initiatives such as the £1bn University Challenge are increasing the opportunities for social enterprisesto get high value, long-term contracts from the public sector.
Social enterprise and the student experience
The growing opportunities for the social enterprise sector demand a response from universities which is being met. Nearly all UK universities have initiatives that provide educational and practical opportunities to get involved in social enterprise. Student run initiatives such as the Cambridge Hub (‘Connecting students with causes’) are particularly impressive, as is the Social Enterprise Network of universities run by the University of Plymouth which is doing some impressive research into the fundamentals of social enterprise.
For its part, Northampton University, has developed and implemented an institution-wide social enterprise strategy. It covering a wide spectrum of activities ranging from support for students to set up social enterprises (including providing them with start up funding) to using our intellectual capital to try and influence policy and practice – all parts of the spectrum are equally important to us. After all, there is no point in developing student social entrepreneurs if we don’t help develop a thriving social enterprise sector for them to work in.
The student experience is different, and better, than it was when I went to university. In 2012 a university education is still about becoming an expert in a chosen field and, I hope, learning to think in new ways, but it is increasingly and overtly about preparation for employment – and that includes employment in the social enterprise sector.
Simon Denny is social enterprise development director at Northampton University.
Extracted from the Guardian

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In the last five years, China has built 20,000 miles of expressways, finishing the construction of 12 national highways a whopping 13 years ahead of schedule and at a pace four times faster than the United States built its interstate highway system. Over the last decade, Shanghai alone has built some 1,500 miles of road, the equivalent of three Manhattans. China’s urban population is projected to grow by 350 million people by 2020, effectively adding today’s entire U.S. population to its cities in less than a decade. China has already passed the United States as the world’s largest car market, and by 2025, the country will need to pave up to an estimated 5 billion square meters of road just to keep moving. China’s love affair with the car has blossomed into a torrid romance. In April, nearly a million people poured into the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition to coo over the latest Audis, BMWs, and Toyotas. But China is in danger of making the same mistakes the United States made on its way to superpower status — mistakes that have left Americans reliant on foreign oil from unstable parts of the world, staggering under the cost of unhealthy patterns of living, and struggling to overcome the urban legacy of decades of inner-city decay. The choices China makes in the years ahead will have an immense impact not only on the long-term viability, livability, and energy efficiency of its cities, but also on the health of the entire planet. Unfortunately, much of what China is building is based on outdated Western planning ideas that put its cars at the center of urban life, rather than its people. And the bill will be paid in the form of larger waistlines, reduced quality of life, and choking pollution and congestion.
The first three paragraphs of Peter Calthorpe’s recent article for Foreign Policy magazine, ‘Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction’. Calthorpe is a renowned San Francisco based urban planner and architect and a founding member of the Congress of New Urbanism. You can check out the rest of the article here.
(Photo source: Inhabitat)
“You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.”
Oromo proverb (via plantedcity)