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Google wants to make renewables cheaper than coal
Agin the Kindle [via RF]
Brilliant Peter Garrett (Midnight Oil) is Australia’s new Environment Minister
David Newton on interfaith dialogue, parts one and two
A sermon from me about endurance, or living through an apocalypse [32KB PDF]
Web/print design job going – ask me about it.
42 Collective: ideas for lower-cost lifestyles
Xero: online accounting package for $50/month
Tom Beard on the stupid DomPost windfarm article
I read in the DomPost today that Transmission Gully is supposed to cost $955m. If my calculations (based on the NLTP) are correct, that’s about eight times more than the entire government spending on public transport planned for Wellington next year. Which is stupid. We could write to Fran Wilde about it.
From a review of The Bourgeois Virtues by Deirdre McCloskey:
For the last generation, we’ve been admonished to lock “utopia” in the attic of historical nightmares and dwell within the cheerfully commercial boundaries of the capitalist imagination. It’s been busy and entertaining and, until recently, it’s been safe. The poor were forgotten or chastised, the critics were stifled or bribed, and the billions in the slums of globalization’s wake were silenced with promises and missiles. But as Mike Davis puts it in Planet of Slums with grim and austere eloquence, “the gods of chaos are on their side.”
Wattson shows how much electricity you’re using in real time
Another reason to boycott Chevron companies (such as Caltex)
Said Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America:
There is no philosopher of so great parts in the world, but that he believes a million of things on the faith of other people, and supposes a great many more truths than he demonstrates. … It is true, that whoever receives an opinion on the word of another, does so far enslave his mind; but its a salutary servitude which allows him to make a good use of freedom.
I went to a presentation on Simply Good Food, a community-supported agriculture scheme. I was impressed by their food, methods and philosophy. I wasn’t impressed that their membership fee is $500. That would be fine if I was buying into a co-op with that money, and getting a share of ownership in the operation, but that’s not how they roll. My $500 would help them cover the risk of starting a new venture, and only buy me the right to buy organic produce directly from SGF. So I hope some other group comes along and imitates their production and delivery scheme, but in a co-op structure.
From Vernon Small’s DomPost story on the Electoral Finance Bill [via Russell B]:
When National has stopped making political hay from the bill – no earlier than the next election, I guess – and when Labour has stopped settling old scores, they might both like to return the debate over election funding to its fundamental aims. At the same time they should find a significant role for the people who actually own the electoral system, rather than use the power of incumbency to tilt the electoral landscape their way every three years.
Boycott Caltex, who’s parent company Chevron funds bad military in Burma
freerice.com improves your vocabulary [via D]
A friend of mine is looking for ideas for facebook applications to develop. Can you suggest any?