TED talk regarding open source and community development of a window gardening project ideal for urban dwellers.
Britta Riley is an artist and technologist who makes crowdsourced R&D solutions for environmental issues. Her company, Windowfarms.org was named one of the top 100 businesses to watch in 2010 by Entrepreneur Magazine. Windowfarms makes vertical hydroponic platforms for growing food in city windows, designed in conjunction with a online citizen science web platform for with over 16,000 community members worldwide.
Freedom of speech, I only see one way for the recent public demonstrations to play out and that is on a gradual increase. The ability to demonstrate is a wonderful right. Unfortunately, it may no longer be enough to create a movement. Our private media has the ability to pick and choose what to highlight for attention and pubic awareness. As some of the publicity of Occupy Wall Street is already waning and winter approaches, they must up the ante if they want to continue to raise awareness. Demonstrations, protests, marches and camp-ins will likely increase in intensity to gain attention in our high signal-to-noise ratio society.
I find the similarity between the Tea Party Protest and demonstrations of the Occupy Wall Street groups more alike than different. Not ideologically, but definitely in their need to have the media appreciate their groundswell. If their goal is to raise awareness, then they need the media coverage for mainstream America to hear them. The Tea Party Protests were relatively peaceful, most of the Occupy Together demonstrations were peaceful, but some police arrests have garnered a headline or two.
The Tea Party gained attention with marches, signs, and blocking traffic. OWS needed to raise the intensity to catch a similar headline. This required stamina and camping in central business districts for the extended media coverage. If the next cause or continuation of these causes expects to gather any attention, then they will unfortunately probably have to raise the intensity. In other countries, this often approaches riots or destruction of property.
When flash mobs driven by technology meet political statements, this could create particularly dangerous situations. Flash mobs already turned dangerous in Philadelphia earlier this year, let’s hope that the economy and restlessness before elections don’t continue to degrade to something more dangerous.
How to Survive a protest turned dangerous:
Stay situational aware and understand your surroundings. If caught in or near a demonstration, have a plan to extract you and your family if necessary. In a mild protest? Don’t fight the crowd unless necessary. Grab someone close by and eagerly agree with their cause. Learn a quick phrase and grab a sign, identify with the cause and move with them towards the edge of the group. Don’t try and travel in the opposite direction. It is like swimming against the tide. When safely out of the path or on the edge, put as much distance as possible between you and the possibly dangerous element.
Swarmed in a dangerous riot? If it is a violent mob that has received the “go text” then innocent bystanders may be pulled in violently and with consequences. If in your car, be prepared to use your car as a weapon. Reverse and get the heck out if possible. If not, slowly and determinedly move forward. Rapidly accelerating may only get your car stuck or wrecked. I am sure an angry indiscriminate mob will excuse your running over a few of their friends once you crash your car into the one they just torched ahead of you. If you can legally carry a weapon, be prepared to use it against the center or leader of the mob. Carry pepper spray, air horns, coins in a handkerchief or what ever self-defense mechanism is legal in your area when in urban environments. Keep tools handy in your car or a can of wasp spray that can shoot a blinding stream of chemicals for several yards. If on foot, look people in the eye and be ready to use available self-defense weapons. Move through the crowd or escape as quickly as possible. Mindset will save you more often than tools, but having tools available will equalize your odds.
The Wall Street Journal brings to our attention that one of our favorite comfort foods and pantry foods is going to rise sharply in prices. As much as a 40% increase in brand name Peanut Butter. The price increase can be attributed to drought conditions and record heat waves this past year in states typically producing large shares of crops.
Wholesale prices for big-selling Jif are going up 30% starting in November, while Peter Pan will raise prices as much as 24% in a couple weeks…Skippy [prices] are 30% to 35% higher than a year ago. Kraft Foods Inc., which launched Planters peanut butter in June, is raising prices 40% on Oct. 31
Find some coupons, go shopping, and depend on the stock already available in stores. Read the labels and look for low salt and low sugar content when possible. Peanut butter is valued for readily available protein, but is high in fat content and additives can further reduce the healthy value.
This weekend brings not one, but count’em… two expos on home safety and preparedness.
Attend the Hurricane Workshop on June 4th. This is an annual event hosted by the Houston / Galveston Weather Service. It will include sessions, exhibits and and free expo at the George R. Brown Convention Center. Plan to attend early since it is open on Saturday until 2:30 pm.
Both will offer good exhibits by vendors on safe home improvements to protect against wind damage, backup energy solutions and family safety best practices.
Hurricane season runs from June 1st through the end of November and it is time to review your family plan.
According to Snopes, this commercial aired at the first Superbowl following the 9/11 attack on NYC. Budweiser did not air it again, but it was available on their website for a period of time. It seems a fitting tribute to remind us of quiet strength and resolve.
Did 9/11 change us a country? Yes. Did it make us more prepared as a county, not really. But, I do believe many individuals have changed their outlook or habits to become more self-sufficient and understand that all we take for granted can change in a single morning.
Take care of your family, enjoy your life, and honour those who have gone before.
With social media and emerging technology, public health agencies can utilize more tools than ever in a public health emergency. In this panel at South by Southwest (SXSW), social media strategists and researchers, working in the front lines of the pandemic H1N1 response, will discuss strategy, innovations and the changing relationship between citizens and government.
Presenters for Social Media response to Health Emergencies
Introductions from the panelists include background on activities during the 2009 breakout of the H1N1 virus media peak in March and April of 2009.
Ann starts with several new projects the CDC rapidly expanded or created during the H1N1 breakout.
Worked with Community Voice Mail to write emails and send voice mails to under-served communities.
Twitter was used to monitor messages and see if there were gaps in knowledge or discrepancies in the information.
Used several different accounts to deliver messages. WebMd partnered to expand reach, the information on that blog was the second most popular blog on WebMD by pageviews.
Modeling behavior partnership with kids at Whyville.
Finally, the CDC encouraged innovation in XML to provide transparency and collaboration. http://www.cdc.gov/socialmedia for data metrics on what worked and didn’t.
David Hale worked on situational awareness (ability of group or individual to have access to information needed to make decisions). Works on Semantic webline at NLM and decided to release auto semantic reviewer. Ex. “swine flu travel” vs “how fast swine flu travels” are different salient tweets and with different needs for information. Used the Natural Language Processing system designed to read medical abstracts and used to analyze tweets. Real opportunities came from biosurveillance, respond to misinformation trends, monitoring of wide-spread sentiment, and potential for evaluating authenticity. Example: Monitor twitter streams and if everyone is tweeting about washing hands and coughing into sleeves, then good. Tweeting about using painter’s mask, then need to key in on that and see how to modify information. Partners with Swift River (Ushahidi) with the University of Wisconsin to evaluate ongoing work.
Andrew Wilson at the Department of Health and Human Services took a brief moment to show a PSA (barnyard conference) from their contest around the H1N1 flu spread of information. Great use of spread of social media and reaching people where their audience is. “Need to leverage social media to produce content that is more personally relevant that will resonate with all of our audiences.” As much as they can deliver a core message to their peers, they need people to deliver to their own personal networks in the tone needed impact to individuals and spread. Example: Spike in twitter traffic. See connectedthebook.com. Worked with Google Health Map via a quick connection during Twitter in initial information storm. Flattened the top down network structure to directly impact response time and spread of information to update and add H1N1 to the list of Diseases.
Find relevant hashtags to follow include #opengov #gov20
Final wrapup included a discussion of how to manage during non-breakout communication. CDC continues to push content consistently and engage during non-ermergency issues. Primary takeaway is all or most of the social media tools were already in place prior to the breakout, so were readily available as people began looking for the information in real-time.
An article has been published over at Newsweek, Rise of the Preppers, talking about the term “prepper” as in someone who is more prepared. This includes the person with an urban garden all the way to the hard-core disaster preparedness guy who fears a breakdown of society. The article borderlines on highlighting the crazy survivalist, but also highlights a statistic I found surprising. In New York, polling has shown that residents are thinking about preparedness. In fact, nearly 50% of people are thinking about it up from just 18% in 2004.
I don’t expect Prepping to go as mainstream as preppy, but if you see someone with a popped collar working in their garden, you might want to worry. The world might actually be ending.
A nice visualization of bank failures in the U.S. over the past two years including accumulated cost. From the smart folks at Computational Legal Studies.
While we were busy enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and counting our blessings for food and health, we may have done a bad thing. We ended up renting and watching Food, Inc.
The movie is a bit of a documentary and expose on the food industry and the largely mechanized version of food growth, production, and delivery to consumers. Who controls the manufacture and quality? Not the FDA apparently, but for the moment, the food conglomerates. We are talking big business and some questionable practices. The moral of the story? There are some good guys out there and they will listen if we as a nation stand up and demand better quality food at better prices.
At fist, I was much saddened and disheartened by the movie. But, I now realize we will probably look back on this time in fifty years and scoff when people try and tell us how they ate. “Really? Food with little nutrional value and all those nasty trans, corn related, disease causing food substitutes? No wonder y’all needed healthcare!” Recognize any of same voices we now use when we look back on the tobacco industry? Granted, it still has room for improvement, but we know the risks and they are out in the open for tobacco and additives. We will hopefully one day soon understand the epidemic of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and even some cancers as related to food. For now, we speculate.
Recent efforts to eat better, live simply and be more conscious have made me realize it isn’t easy, but worth it. I am glad we watched the movie. It was thought provoking, disheaertening and empowering at the same time. Here is to lifting the veil and taking the harder but long term road for health.
