Patrolling the hood

It's another dark, and this time rather stormy, night. 20:05 and I pull myself off the comfortable couch and get on my walking shoes and some warm clothes - it's patrol time. I meet up with 3 other volunteers from my community and together we brave the wind, walking around our neighbourhood for an hour.

Every Tuesday I patrol Muizenberg with friends from the Muizenberg Community Safety Initiative. There are usually 4 of us guys, and sometimes Jane joins us. We all wear hi-vis vests with the MCSI logo on them, and one of us carries a radio - our only defense against the night. Our job is to patrol the neighbourhood, and to report any suspicious activity. It is a passive patrol and we will never engage with "trouble", but rather call it in to the local security company, who can in turn call the police. So far we've only uncovered one daring raid on the metal of the railway tracks for scrap. Or so we thought. Turned out is was just a late night gang repairing the railway line.

We only patrol for an hour, but similar patrols go out every other weekday, and we take random routes. Perhaps not stopping crime, but hopefully making the streets a little safer and ideally easier for other citizens to take back.

More on why I'm doing this and a little bit about the others who walk with me next time. Maybe even a photo...

Vertical integration and Robots

So VI (vertical integration) is normally more a concern for government regulators, but in this case it means something more than anti-competition.

The Economist's Babbage podcast reports that Amazon is buying a company that develops and sells robots that run around warehouses and pick bouquets of products a customer has bought for shipment. This is obviously a clear example of VI as Amazon clearly needs these sorts of robots to make their business more profitable (they have been described as too labour heavy by investors).

Hang on a second. An online retailer being described as labour intensive? Who's point of view is this? With an unemployment rate (what it actually is is irrelevant) in the US, it can't be the person on the streets, or the governments surely? So who are these people? Crazies, that's who. The type of person who believes in endless growth on a finite planet. These type of people:

As if Amazon hasn't hoovered up enough jobs from traditional retailers, they're now looking at getting rid of their own. What's next? Virtual CEO? I wish, then we could unplug him.

People want to work. I have a sneaky suspicion that they would prefer to do work that makes the planet a better place and improves our environment.

P.S. Next time I won't be lazy and will actually look up the unemployment rate in the US.

There are good things.

Judging by the name of this blog, you can imagine that the contents of the posts are not always cheery. There are some great signs out there that things are changing, and most encouragingly for me - mindsets.

One little example is pet training. We recently welcomed Spencer into our house. Spencer is a puppy - see picture. We decided to get him all trained up and so started finding out about puppy training schools. Most training schools these days appear to work entirely with non-violence, all training is done through encouragement and rewards, and ignoring bad behaviour.

What does this all have to do with the state of the world? Thinking about this, I thought that there is no way that these sorts of ideas could spill over into the trainer's and the human trainee's (it's as much about training the custodian as it is about training the dog!) lives. I quickly checked the cynic in me. I think it is safe to presume that if a trainer is training people through encouragement rather than punishment, they will treat people close to them and who they interact with in the same way.

So this is just one small example of how I see mindsets and attitudes changing. Yes, I blog about a lot of really bad stuff happening out there in the world, but things are changing, quickly.

The mo continues…

Mo on a train...

So it's heading towards the end of week 3 of Movember, and think the my moustache is coming on nicely. I must say that I am rather relieved it's only one more week.

As you probably know by now, we're raising money for Project 90 by 2030. I work there, and one of the reasons I do is because they think cradle to cradle. The things we buy and use come from somewhere, and need to go somewhere to be used again. In contrast to cradle to cradle is cradle to grave - that things go somewhere "else" when we're done using them (the "away" in "I'll just throw it away"). Two illustrations of this: one of my colleagues posted a link today of how many raw materials we use in our lifetime, while another recently spoke at a "green burial" colloquium. The second really taking the idea and running with it (personally I'd like to be exposed, I just hope I'd still be edible with all the toxins in my body!).

Now the question is - what to do with my mo once its time has come... Answers in the comments please.

The secrecy bill and the constitution.

Pierre de Vos is a constitutional lawyer and writes a blog about current events seen through the constitution.

One of his latest blogs is about where he thinks the secrecy bill and the constitution clash. A good place to start if you want to know what is wrong with the bill and how it could be fixed.

http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/how-to-fix-the-secrecy-bill-and-make-it-constitutionally-compliant/

More mo

So if nothing else, at least Movember has me blogging again! The idea behind it though is to raise money, and so far there is not much happening. I hope it is like my 'tashe though - a slow starter.

The current mo. A little more than stubble.

There are three of us in our office, and as many will let you know, I am a sucker for competition, so I would very much like to try and raise more money than Dan or Stephen. I might be pushing my luck though, as I recently competed in the Red Hill Challenge and got a lot of my friends to sponsor me for that. They me be a little uit gesponsored (see, I can still talk a little Afrikaans...).

If you are not one of them, I think you should sponsor me. Here's why:

It's the end of the year, and at this time we give prizes to our Project 90 by 2030 clubs. We are still looking for prizes for this year, and so need your money to be able to reward our clubs hard work this year. What have they done you ask? Well, all sorts of inspiring people to act on climate change, and a whole lot of acting themselves. Hell, one of the clubs is even building their own wind turbine! The prizes themselves are given with the objective of cutting more carbon, so you can be sure your money will help do something tangible. The fact that all this happens at schools means that it not only reduces the schools carbon footprint, but also provides an example for the learners of what technologies and actions can help wean us off fossil fuels.

I'd like to aim for R1000, so if you can contribute a bit to that, no matter how small, it would be very much appreciated. If you'd like to donate directly, you can via the Project 90 website. Please let me know though!

Movember and me

Once again it is Movember, the time of year where you get to look silly for good.

I have had various attempts at 'tasche growing, the first was with Fat Tire Bike Tours in Berlin, for their annual Rattiest Tasche compo. Here you can see the result - a good demonstration of the handle bar if I do say so myself.

The second was for Movember itself when I worked at Greenpeace. We dressed as village people - apparently - and raised money (particularly through allowing people to shave them off), and donated it to prostate cancer research. Movember is about raising awareness of prostate cancer and to raise money for cancer research.

During this second Movember the conversation started around the fundraising goal - why are we trying to treat the symptom? Surely going after the cause would be better and smarter? I don't think it is easy to pinpoint one cause of cancer, but there are many that we know about - scientifically and intuitively. I can't be certain, but I would imagine that the rise of cancer tracks the rise of our petro-chemically fuelled civilisation a little too closely. All those toxic substances, working more hours, building nuclear plants - all of this contributes to cancer (and yes, probably some more benign things as well, like burnt toast).

So for this Movember, two colleagues and myself are growing moustaches to raise money for the organisation we work for, Project 90 by 2030. Project 90 by 2030 challenges South Africans to reduce their carbon footprint and change the way they live and relate to the environment. We believe that achieving this goal will not only help us avoid catastrophic climate change, but also have other positive effects, like lower cancer rates. Of course there are other very clear benefits of growing moustaches:

If you'd like to sponsor us, leave a comment below, or e-mail me: glen@90x2030.org.za. If you're on facebook, come find me (if you haven't already). I'll be updating my profile pic every week so you can see the progress...

Something good to eat

Yes it's really hard to always eat the right thing, especially if you're paying money for it. On top of that you've got to watch your weight, make sure you're getting the right vitamins and minerals, the list goes on.

So growing your own food is probably the easiest way to go about things, but can be really hard to do. What often makes it so hard is often the type of things people try to grow. The fruit and veg we buy in the shops has been selectively bred for specific traits - often what makes them most marketable, things like size and shelf life. To get to this point though, they often become hard to grow, particularly in small quantities and without the use of agrochemicals. And I'm not suggesting that we all should be growing heritage varieties either.

Budding gardeners (yes, I did) often joke that all they can grow are weeds. Well, maybe that's not such a bad thing. At least for one, and I'd be prepared to bet a lot more. Pigweed. The name might get you thinking that you should be growing it for other animals, but humans can eat it too. It is considered a weed and in the US it has become resistant to certain over-relied on herbicides and is causing mayhem for farmers of genetically modified cotton. The local variety, Amaranthus hybridus, is still easy to grow, but is not invasive.

Getting on to the eating part, pigweed has many benefits. One serving of the leaves, cooked like spinach, will provide you with five times the iron you need, twice the calcium, 20 times the vitamin A and nearly half your daily protein requirements. I've yet to eat it, but the next time I'm at Kirstenbosch, I'm going to pick up some seeds, grow it and eat it. It could be a while, but I'll report back!

*Most of the info here was taken from an article in Veld and Flora, December 2010, Volume 96(4)
**Photo from www.southeasternflora.com. Used without permission - please don't sue me.