Innovation: Drawing Water from Air

I was fascinated by this story and was excited to see that the company (Element Four ) is based in Kelowna, BC. Let’s hope it stays that way, but I suppose that’s a different story

My hopes are high as I read something like this, excited that a number of companies will turn their focus from how to extract the most blood (or in most cases, tar) from stones (or in the case of Canada, sands), bringing forth an era when we might actually be proud again of our scientific prowess.

What struck me most in this article was the commentary on water bottles (and the inherent plea that we need to stop drinking bottled water):

For the environmentally conscious consumer, the WaterMill has an obvious appeal. Bottled water is an ecological catastrophe. In the US alone, about 30bn litres of bottled water is consumed every year at a cost of about $11bn (£7.4bn).

According to the Earth Policy Institute, about 1.5m barrels of oil – enough to power 100,000 cars for a year – is used just to make the plastic. The process also uses twice as much water as fits inside the container, not to mention the 30m bottles that go into landfills every day in the US. But the mill also has downsides, not least its $1,200 cost when it goes on sale in America, the UK, Italy, Australia and Japan in the spring. In these credit crunch times that might dissuade many potential buyers, though Ritchey points out that at $0.3 per litre, it is much cheaper than bottled water and would pay for itself in a couple of years.

Now … why isn’t the Government of Ontario or Canada looking at companies like this and offering them MORE cash so that they can survive the recession (or state of economic calamity – take your pick), expand and become Canada’s new manufacturing / innovation vanguard? That would take vision, and I doubt our governments have that. They’re still too busy spinning their tires with 19th century laggards.

Who is Gerald Celente? Someone to Listen To?

Here’s a Fox clip (of all sources, yes) from InfoWars, that showcases an interview with Gerald Celente .

Summary of his predictions for America:

America, the first ‘undeveloped’ country (no swift solution to economic issues, the steaming turd of a platform that Bush left for Obama)
Revolution, riots, rebellion, marches
Holidays 2012: food more important than gifts

I’d like to explore a few of his ‘ideas’ in a little more detail. Feel free to comment as we move along.

With most people still avoiding the word ‘recession’ in their dialogue, it’s hard to assume that Conservatives will do anything but cut back, cut budgets, and raise taxes as they ‘pretend’ to be surprised by changes in the economy. I actually count Obama in that camp, despite Reagan-like accusations that he’s a socialist.

The killer question: what do we do to anticipate these changes? Don’t spend on wasteful things.

A self-fulfilling prophecy? Kind of. The smart thing to do? Absolutely.

It’s important for people to understand that they don’t have to spend in order to preserve the health of the economy. It’s important for all of us to appreciate that saving money is not a recent phenomenon. My parents and their parents did it. They kept their financial houses in order. And they are (or were) never ashamed to admit it. Saving instead of spending still ensures that GOOD jobs are created. Spending usually ensures that more demand is placed on short-term, low-wage jobs that offer no benefits and no future.

All we have to do is a little more of the same and avoid the ads, the hype and the mania of the holiday season. I say ‘why wait until 2012′? Why not stop buying crap from thousands of kilometres away today and start saving it or donating what we have left over to local non-profits and charities that are trying to make a different for people?

When we start really understanding the roots of the economic and financial crisis – that people aren’t buying the big-box globalized market structure that’s being rammed down our throat – only then will we realize that things are actually ok. For most of us. The ones that are panicking are the Wal-Marts and the MacDonald’s of the world that might be making money now, but have no hope of a future as we learn how to respect our neighbours again and buy local, build community and pay attention to politics.

Government 2.0

Welcome to Gov 2.0.

Barack Obama has released his site, change.gov .

I was a little overwhelmed late Tuesday night when things were finalized, but I’m really touched now that Obama has really gone overboard with making the web a central place to discuss American … everything.

I am impressed. Scratch everything I said about change being just pennies for Main Street.

For Canada: read everything and let’s start a search for a group (it’s not just one person) that inspires us and that is not mired in the day to day cronyism.

Overwhelmed?

Last night’s victory by Barack Hussein Obama was history in the making.

He’s the first African-American President-elect.

He’s young.

He’s likely to have a very unique way of doing things.

And he’ll probably enjoy two terms.

And election season is over. For now.

The last two months have proven to be a massive distraction for my regular work, but I’ve enjoyed following the Canadian and US elections, along with the growing financial ‘crisis’. I still plan on posting stories regularly and sharing my thoughts, as I now have the great privilege of sharing these thoughts with a decent-sized audience (I’m getting about 5,000 unique visitors per month).

My question to you is what you’d like to see me cover with this site. The defining objective of the site (covering stories related to ‘excited delirium’ and taser issues) has been blown waaaaay out of proportion. While I still try to sneak in a story or two about Tasers, I’ve ‘branched out’ into a number of topics that I feel comfortable discussing with you, including: the economic stories; issues related to taxation; election coverage; the odd conspiracy; and so on. I believe that these stories are still all connected, in that they have lots to do with ‘shock economics’ and ‘disaster capitalism’, terms that Naomi Klein has made ubiquitous.

I almost feel like things are going to jerk to a halt, but I know they won’t. I’ll find lots of case studies and examples of what’s insane about this world, but I also want to start to explore the positive. I have a category called ‘the Future’. I just don’t seem to use it much.

What are your stories about the future? Green/organic/natural/local? People doing good things? Good marketing stories that you want to tell the world about?

And what would we call them in order to keep them consistent with the theme of ‘excited delirium’?

Finally, what would you like me to cover as we get closer to Obama taking over the White House in January? More cynicism, which I seem to be cut out for, or stories about the future? Or a combination of both?

Please share your thoughts when you’ve got a chance.

Thanks and keep reading!

Bill.

A New ‘Platform’: Idealist.org

i signed up with idealist.org last week and will likely start using it a lot more in the coming weeks to promote a number of initiatives that I’m working on, as well as work with others to develop visibility for their products and/or services.

Idealist is a pretty comprehensive activist and social network. The number of people using the site ranks in the tens of thousands and the range of activities include job searching, groups, blogging, organizations, opportunities for speakers and so on. Communication is in three languages (English, French, Spanish) and I’ve signed up for their email alerts.

If you’re seeking to change the world, it might prove to be too massive a task, but if you’re hoping to affect change in just a few small ways, this might be the place for you.

It’s the Facebook for all of us, without the tracking (I hope) and without the restrictive use of personal information. If you want to delete your record, it’s obvious how to do it once you’ve registered.

So become an idealist. Enjoy the community! I’ll post more stories about Idealist in the future as I integrate more with the community.

SPIN Farming

SPIN is short for "Small Plot Intensive" Farming, a project that was started by Wally Satzewich and Gail Vandersteen. Their site can be found here .

The purpose of the project is to maximize the use of backyard space in urban and suburban areas. I’d like to help them get a boost, mainly by encouraging people to link to their site and refer to them on your own personal (or business) blogs.

Ideally, we’d be able to create a larger marketplace where potential "vacancies" or available plots can be filled by eager farmers. Please contact them if you’re interested in either approach so that they can generate a more robust list.

The Power of the Internet and the End of Rovian Politics

This is an inspirational piece . I read it with glee. Before reading below, here’s a great example of what Ms. Huffington is talking about.

Here are some of the details:

Thanks to YouTube — and blogging and instant fact-checking and viral emails — it is getting harder and harder to get away with repeating brazen lies without paying a price, or to run under-the-radar smear campaigns without being exposed.

But the McCain campaign hasn’t gotten the message, hence the blizzard of racist, alarmist, xenophobic, innuendo-laden accusations being splattered at Obama.

And it seems that the worse McCain is doing in the polls, the more his team is relying on the same gutter tactics. So over the next 15 days, look for the McCain campaign to become even uglier. That’s what happens when following Rovian politics is your only strategy — and Rovian politics isn’t working.

McCain has stockpiled his campaign with Rove henchmen, including not one but three of the people responsible for the political mugging inflicted on him in 2000.

Just last week he brought on Warren Tompkins in an "unofficial" capacity to see how receptive North Carolina would be to some Rovian slime. After all, it’s right next door to South Carolina, where in 2000 Tomkins and his buddies in the Bush campaign spread race-baiting rumors about McCain having an illegitimate black daughter (referring to McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget).

And those disgraceful robo-calls that McCain is running ? They were done with the help of Jeff Larson and his firm FLS-Connect — the same firm that created the robo-calls smearing McCain in 2000.

At the time, McCain’s reaction to the attacks on him was: "I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like these."

His reaction now? I have a special place in my campaign for people like these!

So the Karl Rove specials keep coming. Obama and Ayers. Obama the Socialist. Obama and ACORN "destroying the fabric of democracy." Palin (herself the manifestation of Rovian decision-making) delineating which parts of "this great nation of ours" are "pro-American." (Interestingly, the sites of the 9/11 attacks didn’t make the list.)

And, did you hear, Obama is also… black! And he wants to give your money to all the poor black people! McCain didn’t come right out and say that, but it’s surely what he insinuated in his radio address this weekend: "Barack Obama’s tax plan would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency." Somewhere, Karl Rove is smiling, Richard Nixon’s southern strategy is waxing nostalgic, and John McCain’s missing moral compass is getting steamed about John Lewis’ evocation of the civil rights struggle.

But there is a diamond amidst all this dung: the lack of traction this Rovian politics is getting. It’s as if Rove and his political arsonists keep lighting fires, only to see them doused by the powerful information spray the Internet has made possible.

The Internet has enabled the public to get to know candidates in a much fuller and more intimate way than in the old days (i.e. four years ago), when voters got to know them largely through 30-second campaign ads and quick sound bites chosen by TV news producers.

Compare that to the way over 6 million viewers (on YouTube alone) were able to watch the entirety of Obama’s 37-minute speech on race — or the thousands of other videos posted by the campaign and its supporters.

Back in the Dark Ages of 2004, when YouTube (and HuffPost, for that matter) didn’t exist, a campaign could tell a brazen lie, and the media might call them on it. But if they kept repeating the lie again and again and again, the media would eventually let it go (see the Swiftboating of John Kerry). Traditional media like moving on to the next shiny thing. But bloggers love revisiting a story. So when Palin kept repeating her bridge to nowhere lie, bloggers kept calling her on it. Andrew Sullivan, for one, has made a cottage industry of calling Palin on her lies. And eventually, the truth filtered up and cost McCain credibility with his true base: journalists.

The Internet may make it easier to disseminate character smears, but it also makes it much less likely that these smears will stick.

As a result, the McCain campaign’s insinuation-laden "Who is Barack Obama?" was rendered more comical than spooky. Who is Barack Obama? The guy we’ve been watching over and over and over during the last two years. We’ve seen him. We know him. And we can remind ourselves about him with a quick Google search and a mouse click.

Obama "has shown the same untroubled self-confidence day after day," and "over the past two years, Obama has clearly worn well with voters." Those are the words of David Brooks, who has gotten to know Obama just like the rest of us.

Four years ago, McCain’s Rovian race-based appeals to our darker demons might have worked. This year, they are blowing up in McCain’s face. And in the face of the entire GOP.

Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama as "a transformational figure" was powerful. But even more powerful was his withering indictment of the state of the Republican Party and the cancer of Rovian politics.

It was similar to the diagnosis of Christopher Buckley following his endorsement of Obama: "To paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan, I haven’t left the Republican Party. It left me."

There are many other anti-Rove Republicans abandoning their party. I’ve had several Republican friends tell me privately what Powell and Buckley told the world publicly: that they’re voting for Obama. Most of them not because they like Obama, but because they can’t stand what Bush, Rove and now McCain and Palin have done to their party.

Rovian politics may or may not end up destroying the GOP. But, thanks to the Internet, with a bit of luck it will no longer have the power to befoul our democracy.

One thing that Adriana Huffington is exceptionally humble about is, of course, the rise of independent media in North America. Without the rise of sites like the Huffington post, rabble, The Tyee and others, we’d still be relying on political-profiteering bull crap from CTV, CNN, FOX and the small handful of broadcasters that say they aren’t political and then at the 11th hour, endorse certain Conservative politicians.

Financial Crisis: Seeking a non-neo-liberal solution

I’ve done a little bit of searching to back up this request, but didn’t come up with much.

Basically, I believe that we have the wrong people at the table discussing the financial future of the planet. As these meetings transpire with folks like Sarcozy, Harper (&Flaherty), Brown, the IMF and the World Bank and other neo-liberal institutions, we put our fate into the hands of the people that created the crisis in the first place.

If that happens, things will get tremendously worse, and I do not use that word with any sense of hyperbole. Taxes will sky-rocket to pay for the theft that is happening on a daily basis, basic public services will be reduced or eliminated on a global scale and public infrastructure will be sold off at fire-sale prices to the only folks that are sitting on cash: the mega-corporations that are consuming the globe on our behalf. Expect things like tap water to become polluted and electricity to become an extreme luxury that only the super-rich can enjoy.

Those who protest will be imprisoned or beaten by hired mercenary thugs.

If you don’t believe me, dig into the history books a little. Chile in the 70s under Pinochet. In fact, most of Latin America in the 60s and 70s. Germany in the 30s. Poland in the 80s. Afghanistan and Iraq today. The list goes on.

Despite the doom and gloom, at the core of my being, I remain an optimist, but only if we collectivley accept the problem (as identified above) and then act on the issue, creating a solution that the rest of the world can stomach.

The are a lot of options. We can protest. We can rant in blogs. We can cry in our pillows at the end of the day.

However, I believe that we can also develop a plan that is bullet-proof, inclusive of all of the world’s citizens and not just a select few, and make it digital and open-source so that it grow organically.

As I mentioned at the outset of this article, I haven’t found a lot of work that’s being done in this space, so we need to act fast and we need to act in a comprehensive, agreeable manner.

I’ll host the discussion, I’ll organize the materials and I’ll even get together with anyone I know that has the pull to actually present something like this to the UN or other governing bodies. If I don’t do this, I won’t be able to sleep knowing that I’m not acting on the most disgusting level of financial corruption that the planet has ever seen.

So … who’s with me? I know from my site stats that there are hundreds of folks reading this blog and that they know tonnes of people who could also provide some input into this model. Our future depends on it.

By the way, we’ve got until the main summit in mid-November to present our views on this.

rabble.ca BETA site

rabble.ca has a beta site that is about to be finalized. Check here for details

rabble is one of Canada’s leading independent news and media information sites and if you don’t follow their content, you may want to. They’ve drawn in talent from across the country (and occasionally, the globe) and their authors and journalists have an exceptional reputation.

rabble is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to independent, progressive media in Canada and we need more – a lot more – sites like it. There are several publications and independent magazines sites like This , Briarpatch and The Tyee and the list is growing.

If you have a few favourite independent media sites, please list them in the comments. I’d like to start helping people find a complete inventory of these publishers so that we can start putting together a loose ‘network’.

In the interim, here are the details from their press release:

rabble.ca raises a ruckus and launches its new site today

News site also announces partnership with the Council of Canadians, United Steelworkers, and Douglas Coldwell Foundation

TORONTO, Oct. 23 /CNW/ – rabble.ca, Canada’s most widely read independent news media site, introduces three new strategic partnerships today and launches its newly designed website: you can find it at beta.rabble.ca.

"We’re very proud to be introducing new community partnerships together with this relaunch," said rabble.ca publisher, Kim Elliott. "In these challenging economic and political times, we are very pleased to introduce a new strategic partnership with Canada’s most influential activist-based organization, the Council of Canadians."

"rabble is a crucial resource for achieving media democracy in Canada in this era of increasing corporate media centralization," says Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians and outspoken advocate for media democracy. "That’s why the Council of Canadians supports rabble."

Also announced today are new partnerships with the Douglas Coldwell Foundation, partner on the soon to be released on-line Activist Toolkit, as well as with the United Steelworkers, who join rabble today as the sponsor of rabbletv – rabble’s cutting edge new media component featuring live and pre-recorded online video.

rabble.ca’s new website, which can be viewed at beta.rabble.ca, offers visitors an opportunity to provide feedback on the newly redesigned website, and introduces state of the art interactive features including the live streaming capacity of rabbletv, Canada’s largest progressive podcast network, and other interactive and sharing tools.

The new website is built on an open-source platform. "rabble.ca is happy to contribute back to the open source community it has been built upon," explained Elliott. "rabble.ca developers have released modules back to the drupal community for other organizations to make use of and to promote democratic media tools."

Building on their acclaimed and popular election blog, rabble will also be introducing regular blogs on the website. "With the election blog, for the first time, I felt like progressives in Canada had a real daily alternative to mainstream media analysis," explained Derrick O’Keefe, editor of rabble.ca.

"We intend to build on that and make rabble the ‘go to’ place for common sense analysis devoid of corporate media spin in this time of economic crisis and minority government."

rabble.ca chose to relaunch on Media Democracy Day, a day founded to challenge media concentration in Canada and to recognize the power of alternative media. Media Democracy Day activities take place throughout the day today at the University of Toronto, and conclude this evening with a roundtable debrief on the federal election, featuring Maude Barlow, Murray Dobbin, Jessica Yee, Anne Lagac?-Dowson and Duncan Cameron, and a celebration with LAL, Mraya (with Maryem Tollar) and Lorraine Segato at the Steamwhistle Brewery in Toronto Ontario.

Canadian Election: Next Steps

Well, another day, another $300,000,000 down the drain.

Or was it?

Last night, Canada voted. What did we prove?

Here are my thoughts.

The two ‘traditional’ parties (Conservatives & Liberals) are flailing:

The Cons got (nearly) the same vote as the last election
The Liberals got pounded and Dion has already made his ‘I’ll do what you want’ speech

The NDP & Greens did exceptionally well

Popular vote for both parties was up from 2006

Canadians are getting more and more apathetic about a right that few around the globe has.

So what to make of it all? My gut reaction is that Liberal seats in key Ontario ridings were not necessarily surrendered to a desire to elect Conservatives, but to NDP & Green strength. This will continue to happen in future elections. In fact, I think we all knew this would happen this time and even feared it would be worse.

But again, what does it mean? With the NDP and Greens getting nearly as much popular vote as the Liberals (25% combined NDP & Green vs 26.2% Liberal), and conceivably more seats than the Conservatives (because no one but blue-dudes seem to vote in Alberta and no one but separatists seem to vote in Quebec), I feel that the NDP and Greens need some way to get together and consolidate their views. And more importantly, votes. In time, I hope to do or find a full analysis, but supposition will hopefully do for now

I would go further and argue that with the Liberals being dead and dying (you’re either a middle-of-ground progressive like Dion who won’t make any progress with real progressive options or a hard-right red Conservative like Ignatieff), the Liberals might even want to join the party before they do another joke of a leadership race. Save some money, save some embarassment. Do what Canadians are asking you to do.

Next steps?

In the short-term, the greatest priority for both Layton and Dion should be the introduction of Proportional Representation legislation. Show leadership. It’s time we acknowledge that Canada represents a wide array of views and these views should be present in the House of Commons.

DON’T OVER-COMPLICATE IT. We either vote for PR or we don’t. Don’t create messy ‘formulas’ that will distract voters.

Longer-term (assuming we don’t get PR), Jack Layton needs to speak to Elizabeth May about merging parties to avoid more erosion of the progressive voice in favour of Conservatives. Both parties would come out ahead because Greens would shed the notion that they’re ‘yellow blues’ and NDPers would earn a much stronger environmental platform.

Failing all that, we have to be happy with what we got. Again and again and again and again.

Last thoughts? I remain optimistic: let’s start negotiating and get the ball rolling.

Excited Delirium

Stories about Excited Delirium, the Shock Economy and a little fiction here and there.

Category Archives: the future