Common Sense for the New Times
Common Sense for the New Times
Victoria, B.C. is a lovely town to bike in; it is fairly flat, gets quite a bit less rain than nearby Vancouver, and is a fairly compact little city. You can access most services you need on most days, even…
Click the picture for a closer look at tomato seedlings growing in 4″ soil blocks. In the last couple of weeks they have grown taller, but I am most happy with how robust their stems are. The tomatos are accompanied…
We occasionally get a gallon of fresh cow’s milk from a charming Jersey named Sultana; it is a deliciously heart-breaking reminder of hedonism lost. The milk is not homogenized so the cream floats on top and the consistency of the cream…
When I collected my first swarm last year, I arrived at a well-manicured suburban home to find a cluster of bees the size of a Christmas Ham clumped on a branch about ten feet in the air. It is hard…
Piece of the Puzzle: I developed my understanding of sustainability essentially by hyperlinking books. I would read a book, then go through the citations and find another interesting book. This led me through design and ecology and economics and psychology and business and so many other…
There is a lot to do around here: flats and flats of seedlings, a sewing project, pruning, and so much more. Even though lemon, lime and olive have handily survived our mild winter, I am teasing the Norns by putting…
As I say in my blogroll, TreeHugger is where I go to get enraged. In what should be an innocuous Top Nine Products for Healthy Soil post, I managed to flip my lid twice. Peat is bad and Coir is…
Piece of the Puzzle: I developed my understanding of sustainability essentially by hyperlinking books. I would read a book, then go through the citations and find another interesting book. This led me through design and ecology and economics and psychology and business and so many other…
Making sauerkraut is something for the fall, when the cabbages are fresh and cheap. But, having made my ‘kraut last October and skimmed its scum all winter,⊕To good effect. No less a luminary than James MacKinnon said—and I am quoting…
I am not a violent man—but I can be quite ‘passionate’, and today I am feeling passion about solar garbage compacters. It may seem an unlikely lens, but garbage compactors are—ahem—very juicy. The passion precipitating post, on TreeHugger, was mostly…
Why is changing behaviour so hard? In this slidecast I share a way of answering that question, and how Compassionate Systems can increase the effectiveness of our work. This was recorded at the Invasive Species forum in Richmond, BC, in…
It is easy to think the Small and Delicious Life is only so delicious because it is spiced with achievement—but independent taste testers agree the greens are crisper, the bacon more flavourful, the bread nuttier. And you get the sweet…
We met Andrew Plotsky in a roundabout way—he made a short film about B. for diy.org. Naturally, when we heard he was coming up, we googled him up and watched a bunch of his stuff. I encourage you to do…
We are swamped with requests—seductions—for our attention. Most of these will fail, and if you are in the business of changing people—say you work for a government or non-profit—most of your work will fail too. This is because change hurts.…
The Top Ten Myths of Behaviour Change from Brock Macdonald of the Recycling Council of British Columbia, on Vimeo.