sharing the digital experience
{ Monthly Archives }
GenBetween writes
We’re in the middle of summer in some parts of the world, and, it’s especially important for the elderly and the young to be cautious when the temperatures soar.
And, since I will be somewhat responsible for both demographics on a family vacation next week, it’s on my mind.
So she has Heat Tips for Seniors
What Gets Measured Gets Fixed, so Measure the Right Things
WorldChanging Team
June 28, 2007 9:13 AM
Editor’s Note: Sightline Institute just released their third annual Cascadia Scorecard, a publication reporting on the state of human and environmental health in the Pacific Northwest. Through seven key indicators, they examine present concerns, and offer practical vision for a prosperous future. Last year, we published an excerpt from their Sprawl & Health chapter, and one year later we’re returning to the topic to see what this year’s findings can tell us about the evolution of health and the environment, regionally and beyond. The following is an excerpt from the Introduction and Health chapters of Cascadia Scorecard 2007.
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contributed by Sightline Institute
What if your bathroom scale has been wrong all along? Day after day, you step on, and take comfort—or sigh with disappointment—at the reading. But what if it’s been telling you the poundage of some other person? Or, perhaps, the average of 30 strangers, picked seemingly at random? You might try to exchange your scale for one that works; or you might just toss it in the trash. Regardless, you’d certainly stop consulting it….
online community action groups
Note that some are for profit - the criteria here is intent, not business model
(these were gathered in May, as always, organizations can come and go)
Stanford Center for Social Innovation
Social Innovation Conversations
civicventures.org
Community Colleges
Ten $25,000 grants to community colleges preparing people 50+ for careers in education, health care, and social services.
The Next Chapter - Helping society achieve the greatest return on experience
The longevity revolution raises important questions concerning not only national economics, but national values as well.
Civic Ventures answers by helping America achieve a national return on experience
Scottsdale boomerz mission is to connect baby boomers to opportunities for civic engagement that improve our communities. We are a community collaborative dedicated to enabling baby boomers to fully utilize their experience and talents to address today’s economic, social, and political concerns. Boomerz believes that boomers – even as they age – can be an ever increasing asset to society rather than a liability, and is committed to making this concept a reality.
Ashoka is the global association of social entrepreneurs
grassroots.org
http://www.awakentech.com/at/Awaken.nsf?OpenDatabase
netsquared.net
The Commonwealth of Learning (COL)
bridges.org has worked hard to become one of the leading organizations in the field of information and communications technology (ICT) and development
The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is an independent nonprofit research group. We work with organizations of all kinds to help them make better, more informed decisions about the future. We provide the foresight to create insights that lead to action.
Ourmedia - channels of creativity
While other sites are primarily geared toward a consumer audience, our focus is on the producer. On Ourmedia, members can view grassroots works, collaborate, find materials for remixing, hang out, discuss media, swap tips and ideas, ask questions, and help advance the personl media revolution.
grant sources
Beaumont Foundation of America
inert sites
Awakening Technology grows knowledge about collaboration in cyberspace, working at the intersection of business, information technology, and the arts of community and spirit.
http://www.digitalraindrop.com/Community-Technology
Well, I wear black more than I used to.
I’m not really sure what that has to do with green tho.
Did I mention I’m color blind? Is this T green or what?
I must confess I’ve started using the dryer on wash day.
But only partial dry, tired of those drying racks being up in the bedroom all week.
Yeah, its summer, but…
Here’s one popular vision for saving the planet: Roll out from under the sumptuous hemp-fiber sheets on your bed in the morning and pull on a pair of $245 organic cotton Levi’s and an Armani biodegradable knit shirt.
Stroll from the bedroom in your eco-McMansion, with its photovoltaic solar panels, into the kitchen remodeled with reclaimed lumber. Enter the three-car garage lighted by energy-sipping fluorescent bulbs and slip behind the wheel of your $104,000 Lexus hybrid.
Drive to the airport, where you settle in for an 8,000-mile flight—careful to buy carbon offsets beforehand — and spend a week driving golf balls made from compacted fish food at an eco-resort in the Maldives.
That vision of an eco-sensitive life as a series of choices about what to buy appeals to millions of consumers and arguably defines the current environmental movement as equal parts concern for the earth and for making a stylish statement.¹
You know, I can’t afford to do much, I’m just a middle class bureaucrat worrying about having a pension.
What difference can I make?
Some 35 million Americans regularly buy products that claim to be earth-friendly, according to one report, everything from organic beeswax lipstick from the west Zambian rain forest to Toyota Priuses. With baby steps, more and more shoppers browse among the 60,000 products available under Home Depot’s new Eco Options program.
Such choices are rendered fashionable as celebrities worried about global warming appear on the cover of Vanity Fair’s “green issue,” and pop stars like Kelly Clarkson and Lenny Kravitz prepare to be headline acts on July 7 at the Live Earth concerts at sites around the world.¹
I mean, I’m living green! What is this question? You doubt me?
I’m a sensitive guy, I buy organic, I got the eco-concious laundry soap.
I replaced my lights with low watt flourescents (CFLs)!
“There is a very common mind-set right now which holds that all that we’re going to need to do to avert the large-scale planetary catastrophes upon us is make slightly different shopping decisions,” said Alex Steffen, the executive editor of Worldchanging.com, a Web site devoted to sustainability issues….
It’s as though the millions of people whom environmentalists have successfully prodded to be concerned about climate change are experiencing a SnackWell’s moment: confronted with a box of fat-free devil’s food chocolate cookies, which seem deliciously guilt-free, they consume the entire box, avoiding any fats but loading up on calories.
The issue of green shopping is highlighting a division in the environmental movement: “the old-school environmentalism of self-abnegation versus this camp of buying your way into heaven,” said Chip Giller, the founder of Grist.org, an online environmental blog that claims a monthly readership of 800,000. “Over even the last couple of months, there is more concern growing within the traditional camp about the Cosmo-izing of the green movement — ‘55 great ways to look eco-sexy,’ ” he said. “Among traditional greens, there is concern that too much of the population thinks there’s an easy way out.”
The criticisms have appeared quietly in some environmental publications and on the Web.¹
Ah, the movement splinters and you blame me for losing focus?
I’m wary of the “50 simple things you can do to save the earth” approach to environmentalism and economic justice. Some things just aren’t that easy to do at the scale we need to do them. And this focus on tiny individual changes distracts us from demanding better environmental or economic decisions and actions from our elected and corporate leaders….
But there are cheering developments in the current wave of consumer interest in things green. For every weird and disheartening instance of hype — as covered recently in The New York Times, Home Depot’s Eco Choices marketing campaign encompasses everything from energy-efficient lightbulbs to electric chainsaws (not gas-powered!) — there are signs that people are becoming more sophisticated about how to root out the substance behind these claims….
There’s a lot of potential profit in it; why else would Home Depot be interested? That’s good news, too: hopefully it puts long-term pressure on companies like Home Depot not to kill the green cash cow with overpromises of eco-goodness.
I’m also heartened by the small but growing signs of political leadership. Mayor Mike Bloomberg had no particular reason to stick his political neck out on PlaNYC, except that he believes in it — there are probably easier ways to advance his well-established development agenda for the city’s brownfields and other real estate wastelands, as well as his national profile. Now, in concert with PlaNYC, the Bloomberg administration has launched the GreeNYC campaign, encouraging Gothamites to make 10 changes in our daily lives that will reduce the city’s carbon footprint (the amount of climate-disrupting carbon dioxide the city’s population as a whole adds to the atmosphere):…
How are these 10 tips of 2007 any different from the 50 simple things of 1987? Well, they are quite well-edited, for one thing. Rather than overpromising, these changes really will have a huge impact on cutting oil consumption, reducing energy use, increasing the clean power infrastructure, and cutting several kinds of serious environmental pollution if a significant percentage of city residents take them up….
These tips don’t involve purchasing anything we didn’t already buy before, but instead mean making changes in a few key purchases we were unlikely to give up anyway (the idea of giving stuff up has a long and vibrant currency in the environmental movement, but it’s a non-starter as far as the majority of Americans is concerned)….²
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, be real, be realistic.
But no fluff, no glossing over reality - good or bad - no pulled punches.
Be real. Suck it up everyone, be real and make it happen.
Let’s not leave our grandchildren a dust bowl of a planet.
¹ Buying Into the Green Movement
By Alex Williams, The New York Times, Fashion & Style, July 1, 2007
² When Simple Things You Can Do Really Do Make a Difference
Emily Gertz, blog entry at worldchanging, June 30, 2007 12:19 PM
The Break-In That History Forgot
By Egil Krogh, Op-Ed Contributor,The New York Times, June 30, 2007
The Watergate break-in, described by Ron Ziegler, then the White House press secretary, as a “third-rate burglary,” passes its 35th anniversary this month. The common public perception is that Watergate was the principal cause of President Nixon’s downfall. In fact, the seminal cause was a first-rate criminal conspiracy and break-in almost 10 months earlier that led inexorably to Watergate and its subsequent cover-up.
In early August 1971, I attended a secret meeting in Room 16, a hideaway office in the basement of the Old Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House….
I listened intently. At no time did I or anyone else there question whether the operation was necessary, legal or moral. Convinced that we were responding legitimately to a national security crisis, we focused instead on the operational details: who would do what, when and where.
Mr. Young and I sent a memo to John Ehrlichman, assistant to the president, recommending that “a covert operation be undertaken to examine all of the medical files still held by Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.” Mr. Ehrlichman approved the plan, noting in longhand on the memo, “if done under your assurance that it is not traceable.”…
With the Fielding break-in, some of us in the Nixon White House crossed the Rubicon into the realm of lawbreakers. In November 1973, I pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy in depriving Dr. Fielding of his civil rights, specifically his constitutional right to be free from an unwarranted search. I no longer believed that national security could justify my conduct. At my sentencing, I explained that national security is “subject to a wide range of definitions, a factor that makes all the more essential a painstaking approach to the definition of national security in any given instance.”
Judge Gerhard Gesell gave me the first prison sentence of any member of the president’s staff: two to six years, of which I served four and a half months.
I finally realized that what had gone wrong in the Nixon White House was a meltdown in personal integrity. Without it, we failed to understand the constitutional limits on presidential power and comply with statutory law….
Egil Krogh, a lawyer, is the author of the forthcoming “Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices and Life Lessons From the White House.”
well, I grewup hearing about what happened before I was born.
Dust storm approaching Elkhart, Kansas in May 1937. (Library of Congress)
My folks were married in Kansas in 1940.
I was born there.
We lived there until just before my 10th birthday.
We returned many times as I grew up.
One time was a few months after a tornado messed with the town across the river from our home town.
I saw flattened cars and other damage.
Climate messes with lives, always has.
Now we mess with climate
and mess with lives as we do so.
ROME, June 27 — Enough fertile land could turn into desert within the next generation to create an “environmental crisis of global proportions,” large-scale migrations and political instability in parts of Africa and Central Asia unless current trends are quickly stemmed, a new United Nations report concludes.
“The costs of desertification are large,” said Zafar Adeel of the United Nations University….
“Already at the moment there are tens of millions of people on the move,” Dr. Adeel said in an interview. “There’s internal displacement. There’s international migration. There are a number of causes. But by and large, in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia this movement is triggered by degradation of land.”
The report’s authors say individual nations and international groups must collaborate to solve what has so far been an underrecognized crisis in the making, caused mainly by climate change. Water resources are overexploited because the poor have no other options, and climate change has exacerbated the cycle. Governments and wealthier countries must aid these populations to develop more sustainable livelihoods or suffer the consequences, the report says.
“Today, those migrants who are escaping dry lands are mostly moving around far from the developed world,” Janos Bogardi of the United Nations University in Bonn, Germany, a technical adviser on the report, said in an interview. “Those who end up on boats to Europe are the tip of an iceberg.”…
“The numbers we now find alarming may explode in an uncontrollable way,” Dr. Bogardi said. “Because if you look at land use now and dry land, there is the potential that we are nearing a tipping point.”
The United Nations report estimates that 50 million people are at risk of displacement in the next 10 years if desertification is not checked. The report is a result of a United Nations-sponsored conference last December of 150 experts from 40 countries….
We worry about our home.
But:
What happens when our remote food supply is gone?
What happens when land and water disputes consume continents?
This isn’t their problem
it is ours.
All of us.
One opportunity for the Xers to get the Boomers engaged in bridging the digital divide is to slowly use the tools available to edge them into the digital world as far as they’re willing to go. Slowly nudging can work - up to a point. And where that point is will vary wildly.
With the age related digital divide, the opportunity for bridging it will come to the younger digital adept.
The trick will be taking the adaptibility they’ve learned and using it in creative ways to bridge to their parents, grandparents and others slower to adapt to life’s changes - bridging to those resistent even to attempt to learn and adapt.
Live Well on Less than you think, Fred Brock,
The New York Times Guide to Achieving Your Financial Freedom
| Five Year Careers
Smith and other generational experts call the Xers the generation that has developed the art of the short career. “They do something for five years and then go on to something else,” he said. “Having that kind of flexibility is the defining characteristic of how Xers work. Xers don’t believe in long-term commitments because - as their experience growing up and watching their parents being laid off has taught - they don’t last or you can’t depend on them. They want to be flexible, to be able to reinvent themselves when they have to.”… [they] have come to expect a changeable world…. Security is not expected… mastery is flexibility. Success is measured by continual adaptation. |
QUICK: NAME AN AD CAMPAIGN that’s specifically geared to single adults in their 40s or beyond.
Not easy. Amid the increasing emphasis on serving Baby Boomers, marketers seem to be behind the curve in addressing the growing number of their single brethren.
Half of all U.S. households are now headed by unmarried adults, 43% of all singles are 45 or older (one quarter are Baby Boomers), and nearly two-thirds of single women are 35 or older.…
Packaged Facts: Marketers Missing the Boat on Mature Singles
by Karlene Lukovitz, Marketing Daily
Elizabeth of GenBetween writes, “…the statistic that struck me the most:
A recent estimate puts the market value of this “informal care” market at $102.7 billion in 2005. That’s more than twice what the government spent on Medicare that year.
Putting a price on the kindness of family, friends, and, neighbors when caring for an elderly relative, that is staggering. Actually, the value of the people who helped us with my mother for those months was even more than that to me….”