Thanks to Amy Hartman and Don Beck for passing along a very clear message from a New Orleans Catholic School who has a whole system meshwork for educating kids. Check it out here at Principal Moran's of Archbisop Rummel HighSchool. The fervour of the Principal's message affirms the values of healthy Blue, while designing the school's [...]
I just finished a final edit on the last Imagine Abbotsford Dialogue -- to be reported in The Abbotsford News May 14, 2009. This dialogue was on the Health and Community of Abbotsford. One Policy Maker from the Fraser Valley Health Authority remarked that the community gains greater health benefits by investing in kids than [...]
I just followed a link to a beautiful musical creation. This is a very purple song to the core -- or maybe this way, produced by a mobile recording studio that spanned the globe -- maybe it's Turquoise??? The producer has recorded very talented buskers and a host of back-up musicians from around the world, [...]
Mayors need a framework appropriately complex to respond to the emergence of zoonotic diseases (ie. diseases that cross over from animal populations into human populations) (Sapient Circle, 2004). These threats make demands on emergency response systems that are not merely complicated, but are complex. This means that the interconnections of animal and human health systems, through diseases such as SARS, West Nile Disease, BSE, E-Coli and Avian Influenza, create exponential levels of complexity. It appears that zoonotic bio-emergencies are more dynamic and subject to sudden jumps in severity, than non-bio-emergencies, because the underlying viral/biological elements are capable of learning or adapting to their human environments/life conditions. Thus they require complex non-linear approaches to develop successful response strategies.
I've been watching the series on New York produced by Ric Burns (released through PBS but available as a DVD). It is an impressive revelation of the city's 400 years of history. Last week I watched the episode exploring the massive infrastructure creations of Robert Moses including his hundred of miles of turnpikes that decimated [...]
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil is an intriguing film of an unintended case study. It chronicles the radical life condition change that was triggered in Cuba by the break up of the Soviet empire and Cuba’s loss of Soviet support, markets and imports in 1990-92. This was further exacerbated by the [...]
Flow is the story of water (rights) being privatized by Big Biz – esp. Suez, Vivendi and Nestlé (interestingly enough all European). These companies are all portrayed as vulture captilalists who are buying up water properties around the world and privatizing water as a commodity that is being re-sold at prices higher than oil. [...]
The Story of Stuff, is Annie Leonard’s impassioned plea for people to understand that the Earth is a closed system. That the cycle of harvesting/pillaging natural resources; manufacuturing; distributing; using; trashing is an ignorant failure to understand the natural cycles of life on earth. That the trash is going nowhere, and it is time [...]
Thank goodness for youth and student activists. I had the pleasure of enjoying this week, the UFV Film Festival sponsored by the International Development Club and the Students for Sustainability Club. Here was their movie line up: The Story of Stuff The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil Flow – the [...]
I've just listened to the Wisdom Radio interviews of Jim Garrison with Bill McKibben, (author of Deep Economy) and Lester Brown (author of Plan B 3.0). Both authors are talking about a decisive metric that has been scientifically confirmed (by IPCC and others) that creates a super-ordinate goal that cities need to subscribe to. It [...]