Coffeeshrooms, day 12
Almost two weeks on, things are going more slowly than I expected, though they are going.
Monday 16 January, 02012
Thursday 05 January, 02012
Coffeeshrooms, day 1
Inspired by Gunter Pauli (on ABC Big Ideas) and Paul Stamets (TED Talk), and following the Mad Bioneer’s directions, I’ve started an attempt to grow mushrooms on coffee grounds. After looking at mushrooms at Moore Wilsons and many times at Pak’N Save, I finally found some at the latter supermarket that had bits of mycelium attached. They are the most boring possible variety — white button / portobello / Agaricus bisporus — but it’ll still be fun if I can get them to grow and fruit. The hope is that the mycelium will colonise the grounds in the next couple of days; then I’ll keep adding grounds until the spooky stuff decides it’s ready to produce fruiting bodies, i.e. mushrooms.
Thursday 17 November, 02011
Are you interested in turning the Khan Academy into a business?
This is beautiful:
Question [to Salman Khan]: Are you interested in turning www.khanacademy.org into a business? Maybe with some VC funding?
Answer: I’ve been approached several times, but it just didn’t feel right. When I’m 80, I want to feel that I helped give access to a world-class education to billions of students around the world. Sounds a lot better than starting a business that educates some subset of the developed world that can pay $19.95/month and eventually selling it to some text book company or something. I already have a beautiful wife, a hilarious son, two hondas and a decent house. What else does a man need? With that said, if you are a social venture capitalist and are looking to deploy capital with the highest possible social return per dollar invested, we should talk. I think you’ll find that there is no more measurable, scalable and high impact way to educate the world.
[via John Robb]
Friday 14 October, 02011
Avery Bartlett Books’ debut: The Biblical Mandate for Caring for Creation, by Dick Tripp
Find more about the book + ordering info at Avery Bartlett Books’ new website.
Paul Kingsnorth on having kids (in an overpopulated country)
Having kids is not a ‘decision’, like buying a car. It’s a commitment to a whole life change: in attitude, in experience, in the meaning of love and commitment. For me, having kids has deepened my commitment to working out how the hell to live through this, and to finding out what can be saved and bettered, because it gives me a sense of being part of this world for generations to come, my decisions and impacts echoing on in others after I’m gone. Having kids has connected me more deeply to the world. It’s made me feel, and understand, how to teach the right values, and how to learn them. It forces me to answer questions I would otherwise never ask. It shows me what unconditional love is and it provides me with human beings I would unquestioningly die for if I had to, and with that I learn selflessness too, and all of these things make me better equipped for being in this world, even as it falls apart. All told, it shows me what life means, better than anything else ever has.
[source]
Sunday 22 May, 02011
Friendship v politics
“When it comes time to take stock, the most painful wound is that of broken friendships; and there is nothing more foolish than to sacrifice a friendship to politics.” –Milan Kundera in Encounter
Friday 06 May, 02011
Thursday 05 May, 02011
Audio lectures: Luke Timothy Johnson & Alan Watts
For your education & ecumenical listening pleasure, for a limited time only, here are some mp3 lectures from my dropbox:
Luke Timothy Johnson: Early Christian Experience of the Divine [160MB]
Alan Watts – The Tao of Philosophy [228MB]
Alan Watts – Who is it who knows there is no Ego [48MB]
Alan Watts – various lectures [205MB]
Tuesday 26 April, 02011
Te Whanau a Apanui on deep-sea drilling
Tribal leader Rikirangi Gage said
Te Whanau a Apanui oppose Petrobras’ deep sea oil prospecting and drilling for good reasons. Our ancestors didn’t instruct us to be selfish in the way that the Government is thinking, risking so much and thinking of so few. A longer term perspective shows that bringing up oil from under the deep sea floor to be burnt will cause harm to ourselves, our resources and the world around us.
Wednesday 23 March, 02011
Apathy, art then and now
“I wish you would write a poem in blank verse,” Coleridge wrote to Wordsworth, in 1799, “addressed to those who, in consequence of the complete failure of the French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes for the amelioration of mankind, and are sinking into an almost epicurean selfishness, disguising the same under the soft titles of domestic attachment and contempt for visionary philosophes.
[from The Making of the English Working Class, by EP Thomspon]
