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Wellington events, feat. RSS feed [via Wellurban]
Allah be praised: Higher Taste, the Hare Krishna restaurant and home away from home that used to be above Unity Bookshop in Wellington, is reopening 12 February in the lower level of the Old Bank Arcade.
OK, I might have found a candidate to stand for mayor to beat Kerry Prendegast. What we need now are some policies. What would you like to see the mayor focus on?
UPDATE: My candidate suggests there may already a suitable candidate: Ray Ahipene-Mercer
& while we’re getting polictical, try theyworkforyou.co.nz, developed by Rob McKinnon, who was talking at Russell Brown’s Great Blend thing tonight.
Unconfererences [via Russell B]
Tom Beard (kindler, gentler local Kunstler) arguing well about sprawl
… and holding forth on the pods
Just before I head up to Te Awamutu to attend Jackson & Freida’s wedding, here are some paragraphs which struck me, from Kunstler’s The Geography of Nowhere:
On the other side of Monroe Muffler, heading deeper into town on South Broadway, is a small realtor’s office ensconced in what appears to be a minature New England church, complete with steeple. The whole structure is about the size of a detached garage. It is a holdover from the period between the two World Wars when it was the fashion to put roadside businesses in cartoon-like buildings: gas stations that looked like mosques and log cabins, motels like windmills, lunchrooms shaped like hot dogs, hats, bulldogs, igloos.
(more…)
Recent Kim Stanley Robinson interview
The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) summary rundown: human-caused climate change is very likely to be already detectable; the world is very likely warmer than any time in the last 1300 years; the world will warm by 1.8–6.4 degrees C this century, and sea will rise between half a foot and two feet, not counting any of the sorts of effects mentioned here last month
… and more at wikipedia
Rainbow Gathering #7 begins 4 March in Northland
Paul Graham on art
Is intellectual property a kind of colonialism?
Government to favour sustainably produced goods and services
Environmental Choice-ticked products (very short list)
Hunter Lovins talks to ABC about natural capitalism [23MB mp3]
Natural capitalism means businesses a. using resources heaps more productively and eliminating waste, b. altering production methods to imitate nature (e.g. spider make stronger-than-kevlar webs at room temperature sans vats of sulphuric acid), c. become restorative rather than extractive of natural capital. Yeah!
Paul Graham on wisdom v. intelligence
The Living Machine
Who’s the wisest person you know?
In Educating for a Sustainable Future [55MB mp3], David Orr says: “we ought to begin pricing non-renewable fuels at the same rate as the cheapest renewable substitute.”
Summary of Sir Harry Kroto’s talk Science, Society and Sustainability, given this past Thursday at the St James: “religion is very bad, philosophy is useless, politicians are evil, science is good, scientists are very good, scientists with a faith (except Buddhism) are schizophrenic, reason is good, doubt is good, we’re running out of oil, climate change might be anthropogenic, more and better science will solve our problems.”
Isaiah 2:2–5 is part of the Saturday morning service in the NZPB. It’s the swords & plowshears bit. Reading it I thought the church is the people who are walking in the light of the peacemaking god who let us kill him so that we wouldn’t have to kill each other any more.
I’m supposed to be writing another dvd review now (since I’ve watched about 20 since the last one) but instead I thought I’d ask for some help. I’m about to embark on organising a community clothes swap. That’s where everyone who wants to brings their unwanted clothes (and possibly household bits and pieces/cds etc) and pays a small donation to get in and then fossicks round and takes whatever they like from the other people. Sort of like a garage sale, but less money changing hands. It sounds more complicated than it is, just like at a normal garage sale once you get past the initial weirdness of rifeling through peoples goods it’s just lovely. What I want help with is a good cause to donate the proceeds to. So far am thinking a) mary potter hospice b) kathy needs to buy a bed fund or c) samaratains wellington. What say you?
Poetry events coming up: Newtown Spoken Word this Friday at the N-town Community Centre, co-hosted by Wellington’s own Bel; and Howltearoa next Monday at Southern Cross Bar.
Also, what a date today! All 0s 2s and 7s!
Welly Events
