This is my dream: To live as my forefathers once did - in harmony with the land that sustains us. A project to investigate and innovate the creation of a low impact home with methods of living in a form of permaculture designed to sustain my family and improve biodiversity. To leave the land richer than before and in doing so enable others to do so.
Christiania Normalizing the freetown
Posted 04/06/10 by Matt B in the Online category
Christiania is possibly the biggest and longest running experiment in alternative culture and practices. This might not be the way that every one of us choose to live our lives but it represents the chance for people to live lives that are not the same as everyone elses. What would it mean tot he world if this were to be lost?
Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
Posted 19/05/10 by Matt B in the News category
In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare constitutional rights to nature, thus codifying a new system of environmental protection.
Reflecting the beliefs and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador, the constitution declares that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” This right, the constitution states, “is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people that depend on the natural systems.”
The new constitution redefines people’s relationship with nature by asserting that nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited by people, but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity under the law.
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The hardest choice of my life
Posted 16/05/10 by Matt B in the Urban category
One of the hardest choices I have ever had to make is to look at moving to London for work.This could mean not seeing a natural plant for months at a time. I'm not much looking forward to it but there must be some way to be green and earth right in the middle of a city...
Any ideas?
Snakes in a lab
Posted 17/04/10 by Matt B in the Science category
Here is a great article that demonstrates and almost wilfull blindness by scientists that I beileve is slowing progress down.Scientists have discovered exactly how cobras raise their menacing hoods.
The story is sinple. A great study ahs worked out how the "hooding" actually works. The the article goes on to say that the same nerves and musles are present in non hooding snakes too.
"This is an example of evolution's remodelling [as] derived species emerge," said Dr Kardong. "There's been a change in the nervous system's control over these muscles."
Professor Young explained that cobras were not the only snakes to hood. "Several groups of unrelated snakes show almost identical defensive behaviour," he said. He now hopes to study how these other snakes raise their hoods.
Hello, can anyone else see the bleeding obviouse here? GCSE Biology anyone? Logic 101 too good for you? An introduction to populations in statistical anaysis too much like hard work?
There is the idea presented here that all these snakes "evolved" hooding on their own and that this used these existing adaptations.
Now the prevaling theory is that varience developed in life on earth through random mutations (changes). Okay so let's not debate that one here but let us remember that we are dealing with random. If you accept that random can introduce new information you must surely also recognise that it may also remove it too.
The assumption that complex is better is to impose an idiology on things that does not exist. Nature is not "working towards" it simple "is".
If a mutation that disabled, switched off or stopped a feature did not convey significant disadvantages within certain groups then that would not be purged from the genepool. Indeed sometimes it might be an advantage.
Think of humans we come in a variety of colours and there is no saying which colour came first. That different groups have different colour skin is without question. There is a good chance that we white humans are a mutation without the normal ability to pigment our skin. If you accept the prevailing "out of Africa" idea then this is almost certainly true.
Are we not told in school that humans once had tails. That we once had gills that parts of the body like the appendix are "left overs" from something else we don't have or use any more.
Why then is it so hard to grasp that hoods in snakes might have come before no-hoods.
My prediction is that future studies will show that hooding snakes all use the same of very, very similar mechanisms pointing back to a single hooded anscestor of hooded and not-hooded snakes.
Simple logic suggests it is the most likely outcome.
Me on health issues.
Posted 05/04/10 by Matt B in the Online category
The Future Of Sustainable Farming?
Posted 17/03/10 by Matt B in the Online category
The idea for vertical farming was born in 1999 in a Columbia University classroom when Dickson Despommier, a professor of environmental sciences and microbology, offhandedly mentioned the idea to his students. Inspired by the idea, Despommier and his class made the first outline of a vertical farm in 2001, and created the website verticalfarm.com to chronicle their research.
Southern Water wipe outs river for a small fee
Posted 08/03/10 by Matt B in the News category
The Environment Agency has prosecuted Southern Water for causing untreated sewage to escape from a pumping station for a period of over 14 hours last year killing hundreds of fish in a New Forest river.The Bartley Water is a river that passes through the New Forest. It runs from Bartley to Eling where it becomes tidal and flows out into Southampton Water. The river is despite the damage an important recreational and wildlife haven, especially at the Eling end of the river. It is also home to many protected species of fish and a diverse community of invertebrates and river life.
Sadly however the pumping station failure, wiped out whole communities of river life over a two kilometre stretch of river, including pollution tolerant species such as leeches and midges. The sewage stripped the oxygen from Bartley Water and increased the ammonia level in the watercourse to almost four times the lethal limit for fish. In many cases the species cannot be restocked and will have to be repopulated naturally.
Members of the public alerted the Environment Agency and Southern Water to the incident on 30 August 2008 after witnessing fish in distress in the Bartley Water. Southern Water sent an engineer to the site and the pumps were finally restarted at around 11.30am the following day.
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