Scuse me while I indulge

I must have picked up some new readers recently as the stats are picking up nicely. So for you newbies, read WorldChanging now and every day from now on. If you're a greeny hippy you'll love it and if you're not you might be able to pull your head out your ass for one minute and realise that all your previous ideas about greens being anti-technology luddites were, to put it nicely, compost. ahem, now that's out of my system... WorldChanging is interesting, that's a given. Every time I go there there's something that tickles my fancy or grabs my attention in some other pleasurable way. But then occaisionally and almost everything makes you go "HOLY FUCK THAT'S SO COOL" or "I WANT ONE" or some similar exclamation. Tonight was one of those nights so I'm going to insist on sharing some with you. (Don't even think about leaving now kids!) Firstly, those of you who know me will know I have rather staunch opinions on exploration cause there's that raving anti-colonist in me. So I get excited when people go on exploration missions with a bit more than "what money can we make out of this new thing" in their heads. These guys are in the 'doing it cause it's there' camp of exploration. But what's cool about their trip is that they went "so antarctica's getting screwed by climate change more than anywhere else so let's make as minimal impact on this place as we possibly can". What's really cool about this post as these guys have put out a call out for help on the details. They give the parameters and ask for feedback. Comments are pretty interesting (especially if you're an energy geek! Next up there's a rather glowing review of Hitchhikers Guide. Bit of a contrast to span's which makes me even more keen to see it. Although I'm not to keen on going alone... *sending vague hints to the universe* Rolling on... (or should I saw scrolling down) The Ndiyo project. basically cool, small, energy efficient, Linux based computer roll out development project. Another article to fit in the WorldChanging leapfrogging technology topic. Then there's this! Go the site to check out it's story. But great to see public art based on raising public consciousness about the waste aspect of this great technological revolution we're living in. Which brings me to this one (yeah sorry flicking around the site now), which has some damn interesting observations to make about the connections between the level of creativity in a given place in relation to the propensity towards innovation in those same places and the likelihood of all these creative, innovative people to want to live their lives in sustainable ways. It raises some good questions about what the hell we're doing in little ol' Aotearoa. Take Wellington, there's a whole heap of creative people here (I love you all!) and there's a whole heap of innovative people and everywhere I go people are talking about some cool thing they are doing to make their lives more sustainable. People getting excited about the little things in their own lives, but also bemoaning the lack of support for some truly radical shifts in the way we run the city as a whole. There's still that stupid ass road going through and there's still people wanting more of them. We did manage to keep the trolley busses around but these are baby steps compared to what's out there. Where is the radical building design energy freak designer plan writers? Why isn't the city council pushing this? (And don't tell me I'm not looking hard enough, I shouldn't have to). Instead we've still got Kerry "I don't care if you hate me" Prendergast and the the only issue the two 'contenders' for Parliament have managed to agree to debate on is a stupid car race. The three of them combined wouldn't have any vision even if you stuck them in a room full of magnifying glasses and the full back catalogue of The Ecologist for three weeks. Creative Capital my ass. Ooh, that was a rant, should stop now. I mean move to the next article. This article about the energy balances of the planet is rather interesting, especially if you're like me and find the whole topic of climate change rather dense and confusing (that would be because it is folks). Then this beautiful thing and more photos here of extreme cool truck art in Pakistan. I like that, if you're going to drive a vehicle, make it gorgeous! Finally (promise) for the linguistic geeks out there a rather interesting article about Globish - or the new global communication language. OK sorry. Thank you all for allowing me to have that wee indulgence. I don't think it hppens all that often (if ever) and if you were equally interested in at least one of those articles then I am not the only freak around here... And of course if anyone has any thoughts about all that stuff up there, you know what button to push.