Elemental

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I’ve been very remiss and forgot to mention my blog has been listed in Online Engineering Degree’s Top 50 Environmental Engineering Blogs. I’m honoured. I’m listed on the Industry Insider area. From the dip in traffic I usually suffer in July and August I suspect I have a few student readers out there who will find the list useful.

admin Diversions blogs

Hattie over at AJ has an update on our favourite eco-Hobbit House, which I originally posted in January 2007. The post is in my top ten most popular, so maybe the market for such dwellings is growing?

Still no word on how it passes Building Regs, but good to see the movement growing – the builder will be assisting 11 others to build a house each in a settlement in Wales. A refreshing change to the UK standard volume housebuilder offering.

admin Diversions hobbit, Housing, self build

Another great short video from TED – this time on plastics in the ocean.

“Only we humans make waste that nature can’t digest”

Charles Moore: Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

admin Diversions Charles Moore, ocean, plastics, waste

Thanks to whoever alerted me to this great, short TED video. The goal is to harness wind power at 1,000 – 15,000m in the troposhere (much above where wind turbines currently operate). Which reminds me, I must dig out the flexifoil now the evenings are brighter…

Saul Griffith: Inventing a super-kite to tap the energy of high-altitude wind

admin Diversions kite, renewables, Saul Griffith, TED, wind

I hate starting posts with apologies, but here goes. I have a list of posts I want to write and I just don’t have time to write them. Rather than let them sit in my mental inbox until I forget about them, I’m doing a quick update without fleshing out the bones so to speak.

Firstly, I’ve been to some rather excellent events hosted by wise women in London as of late, organised by the anything-but-lazy Polly who blogs over at the Lazy Environmentalist.

The three events have included a talk by Rob Hopkins of Transitions Towns and The Transition Handbook, a talk by Oliver Tickell on Kyoto2 and a fascinating evening on CSP introduced by Katherine Hamnett* and including talks on Desertec from trec UK and an intriguing proposition from Seawater Greenhouses. Polly is also heading up a campaign for Planetary Rights (like I said, anything but lazy!). I urge you to go check out the links and if you’re in London, try to get along to some of the Wise Women events.

Secondly, I’ve been to my first Sponge event. Again, check them out – great to put faces to names and to meet with some old acquaintances and ex-colleagues.

Thirdly, I was at the Sustainability and Economics event Phil blogs about here. Hilarious panel discussion, completely off topic (the phrase “spectrum of evil” was bandied around!). I have some notes and thoughts about the morning and if I ever get a chance I’ll try to blog something.

Finally, there are a few new blogs and twitterers (tweeters? twits?) to check out:

• Guy Battle at Guy’s blog (blog not associated with Battle McCarthy, but rather Planet Positive)
• Derek (a fellow CIBSE member) at Keeping ahead of the Oil Curve
• Su Butcher (twittering) of Barefoot and Gilles architects
• Shari Shapiro twittering and blogging at Green Building Law, who is just back from greenbuild, as are fellow tweeters Preston, Elaine and Pam.

Enjoy!

*I turned to my colleague and said the Katherine Hamnett to be met with a blank face – well, I was impressed and slightly starstruck…

mel starrs Diversions Katharine Hamnett, Kyoto, Oliver Tickell

Image via Wikipedia

I am fascinated with cognitive biases. I’ve mentioned the confirmation bias before and whilst reading The Black Swan by Nassim Nicolas Taleb (who is a big fan, as am I, of Kahneman & Tversky), I was reminded of the following statistic which I found in Mintzberg’s Strategy Bites Back by Spyros G. Makridakis (pg. 168): believers remember 100% of confirming evidence but only have 40% accuracy when recalling disconfirming evidence. On the other hand skeptics can recall 90% of both confirming and disconfirming evidence.

A fact worth remembering when you’re next reading something

mel starrs Diversions Amos Tversky, Black Swan, Cognitive bias, Confirmation bias, Daniel Kahneman, Economics

Not often I back a winner…

mel starrs Diversions US presidential elections

Ten years later, and still not everyone gets all of this. However, things are changing. Facebook has a lot to answer for. When my brother (a chef, so not often “connected” to the internet except by SMS) gets a twitter account, then I’ll know I can stop banging on about this stuff.

In the meantime, revisit the message of Cluetrain, brainchild of Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine via Michael Specht:

mel starrs Diversions Cluetrain Manifesto, Facebook, Marketing, Micro-blogging, social media, social network, twitter, Web 2.0

What’s more effective? Thinking short term doom (100 months) or making an investment in long term thinking?

my gut feeling goes with the second – any thoughts? Hat tip to Paul Miller for The Long Now connection. That’s not to discredit the 100 months campaign, I just have reservations with their tone of message. Guess I’m an optimist rather than a pessimist.

mel starrs Diversions long term thinking, optimism

No Words Necessary - The Hand

Some great images courtesy of The Independent. The full article here, a flavour:

“We set up the competition to give cartoonists around the world a platform on which to express themselves,” says John Renard, one of the Earthworks organisers. “We hoped that the competition would stimulate cartoonists to use their pens and wit to help combat environmental devastation and give new impetus to our desperate fight to stop global warming,” he says. “After all, humour is often a valuable key in the struggle to win hearts and minds.”

mel starrs Diversions cartoon, Climate Change, humour