Start with the money: Over £ 4,000 per badger culled. That’s a big number. We didn’t like the badger culling “solution” to bovine TB because killing ought to be a last resort – we value life, so it is very sad to hear that the deaths were inhumane with 20% taking longer than 5 minutes. …
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Month:February 2014
The troubling word is “doomsday”.
As the weather plays games with us, blowing, freezing, heating at the wrong times of year, it is somehow reassuring to read about a vault for seeds now preserving 800,000 species. It is dubbed the “Doomsday Vault”. The preservation vault, started 6 years ago, was built in the Arctic and requires little intervention to do …
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Mozilla, the power behind Firefox, launches a $25 smartphone.
Mozilla’s smartphone operating system, Firefox OS, is being installed on mobile phones made by its partners, like Alcatel, Huawei, LG and ZTE, which will retail for $25 and be targeting fast growing emerging markets where users are unwilling or unable to be tied in to long term contracts. Their Firefox OS phones will give multimedia …
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Be a “B Corp” for sustainability.
“B Corps”, started in 2006, are a new type of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. It aims to certify businesses that serve a globally responsible initiative. If you care about sustainability, social equity, eco-energy, ethical business, saving the planet or things like that consider using companies on …
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There’s nothing wrong with hard work, unless …
Working hard is fine, and many people have to work hard just to get by, but whether it’s by choice or necessity when it makes you sick, stressed, stupid, off-balance and disengaged, the balance is wrong. The Washington Post offers 5 reasons why you shouldn’t work too hard, at least from an American perspective. What …
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Open management.
Being an advocate of open management systems, an article by Inc. Magazine: Why You Should Let Your Employees Do Whatever They Want, drew attention. Caution, however, was raised by the tag line: “Focus and discipline are relics of 20th century business. Here’s what’s taking their place in the virtual, open source era”. No, sadly, that …
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Linking weird weather to rapid warming of the Arctic
Professor Jennifer Francis recently presented evidence showing that the loss of Arctic summer sea ice and the rapid warming of the Far North are altering the jet stream over North America, Europe, and Russia and these profound shifts increase the likelihood of more extreme weather. The so-called jet stream has increasingly taken a longer, meandering …
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Show love! Philanthropy doesn’t match wealth growth.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy notes that “Gifts surge from US donors“. That’s good, especially in difficult times. But BloombergBusinessWeek read between the lines and saw that “Billionaires’ Wealth Is Skyrocketing. Their Philanthropy Is Not“. Sadly. It is unfortunate because this is another sign of a widening wealth gap between the top and everyone else, between …
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A minimum wage stimulates the economy?
I’ve always been against the hand of the state in private decisions and forcing a minimum wage is one of those interferences which has always grated. However, in a world where technology is raising productivity and reducing the demand for labour there ought to be a popular desire for everyone to have the ability to …
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Farming in the city.
It’s a cute idea and seems to have much merit. Put a fish farm in a shipping container, plonk a hydroponic greenhouse on top and “hey presto” you have a self-contained, eco-efficient food production system that can sit in a small garden or yard behind your house or urban industrial/commercial building. ECF Farmsystems Containerfarm claims: …
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