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New Toy - Very Small Computer July 31, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , add a comment

Okay, I know I shouldn’t succumb to the joy of gadgets, but this one is very seductive. My new Vodafone 1605 (aka. HTC TyTN) phone / PDA / baby laptop / camera / dictaphone thingy arrived last Tuesday, and it is amazing. I haven’t yet figured out how to get it to feed the cat, but I’m sure that function is in there somewhere.

So far, I’ve used it to take photos, make a blog entry, scribble some notes, wake me up on time, send a few emails, keep my contacts and appointments and even to make phone calls.

It’s about twice the size of my old Nokia, so I don’t look like I’ve got a book up against my ear when I’m talking on it, and it fits into phone pockets in handbags. Vodafone have coloured it an elegant mushroom-grey, rather than the silver or black of the standard model from HTC.

Just about every form of connectivity is catered for, from GPRS and 3G to wi-fi and the new HSPDA which Vodafone will apparently be starting to roll out this summer, and which will give broadband speeds on the mobile network. The wireless worked well in a cafe in Bloomsbury after I set it to optimise connectivity rather than battery life.

It runs Windows Mobile 5, with Mobile versions of Word, Excel and Outlook. To use those, you’ll probably want a keyboard, which is cleverly tucked away underneath.

I found the keyboard good to use, though if you’ve large or unsteady hands it will not be easy.

The screen is very bright and clear, and could probably be used to watch films. It is a touchscreen, working well with stylus or thumbnails. If you use your nails, keep them long to avoid messy fingerprints.

I’ve put a 1GB Sandisk MicroSD card into it for extra storage, which added about £40 to the £50 Vodafone charged me for phone (with an 18 month contract and some muttering about the wonders of TMobile). That is a little fiddly because it is so very small - about the size of my thumbnail - but seems to work well and means that I can store music, documents or whatever else takes my fancy. Make sure you format it before you put it in.

The email is MS Outlook, and works well with my IMAP email server.
There is a facility for push email through MS Exchange if you’re so
inclined, but I’m happy to just pick my emails up every now and again.
If someone needs me urgently it is, after all, a phone. This also
keeps the costs down a lot.

The big disappointment is the camera. The shutter speed seems very slow, and the flash not particularly useful, so photos at night do not work too well. This may be operator error - I’ve yet to figure out what all the little symbols mean. I haven’t tried the second camera, for video calling, and probably won’t use it much.

One other area which worries me is the way that Vodafone charge for data transfer, which is by the megabyte with no ability to buy a fixed price pack. I hope that changes soon because they are very uncompetitive with TMobile in this area.

This is the best multifunctional device I’ve seen in a while. It renders PDAs, and possibly the Blackberry, obsolete and may mean that it is less necessary to carry a laptop. I’m hooked.

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10 ways to reduce your impact on the planet July 30, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Environment , 11 comments

Over at The Coffee House they’ve been trying to put together a list of ways in which ordinary people can reduce their impact on the planet. They’re all good ideas, though I’d change them to emphasise Reducing, rather than reuse or recycling, and to include some points which are not for consumers, but for citizens.
At the moment, their list is:

1. Walk, cycle, use public transport & lastly, carpool
2. Reduce, reuse, recycle
3. Reduce useage of lights, heating & gadgets
4. Buy Fairtrade & Organic
5. Buy energy efficient products
6. Protect woodlands & green spaces
7. Reduce useage of fossil fuels
8. Conserve water
9. Use more renewables
10. Buy local, reducing product miles

My 10 points are:

1. Organise your life to reduce the distance you travel as much as possible.

2. Reduce the use of gas and electricity in your home

3. Buy fewer things.

4. Encourage green space.

5. Be mindful of the impact of all purchases

6. Reduce your meat intake. Set yourself a goal of eating meat no more than twice a week, and make it a treat, eating good quality organic meat cooked well.
7. Get your electricity from a renewables suppler, such as ecotricity, if you can’t generate it yourself. Consider using this sort of electricity rather than gas.

8. Become involved in local politics, encouraging your local council to reduce the environmental impact of their activities, and improve community facilities.

9. Actively protest against high-impact activities. Check planning requests, and submit against any requests to increase carparking, concrete over land, or anything else that will have a negative environmental impact.

10. Evangelise the need to reduce our impact on the earth whenever you can. Ask for tapwater in restaurants, complain about the amount of packaging when you buy something, if you’re buying a new thing, ask the retailer to take back the old.

Tavistock Square July 29, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Camden , add a comment

Tavistock Square

The lawn is brown and dry, but the trees are in full leafy green, getting their water from somewhere deeper down. Perhaps its true that Thames Water’s pipes are leaking so much that there is plenty of water about 5m below the street.

Tavistock Square is my favourite of the Bloomsbury squares with its statue of the Mahatma Gandhi and the memorial to victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite the traffic close by, it’s a calm and tranquil place.

This is my first post from my new mobile phone, a mini computer with camera, ms word, email, browser and all. I’m a bit disappointed with it - it refuses to make coffee or feed the cat.

No Israel, the world does not back your Lebanon offensive July 27, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , 1 comment so far

Israel seems to have taken the outcome of the summit in Rome as a sign of support.

They are wrong. No matter how much sympathy I may have for their difficult position in the Middle East, bombing little children and innocent civilians is very very evil. Every soldier who fires a gun or aims a bomb which hits a child has done an evil thing. Those who order them to do so, those who supply the weapons they use and those who aid and abet them are the same.

If our leaders have given that message, then they most certainly do not speak for me. Or, for that matter, for Saga Lout and as people respond to this, it will perhaps become obvious that they don’t speak for many. By the way, I’ve no idea, after I post this entry, what other people will say about the article.

What planet are you on? Talking about the environment July 24, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Environment, Reviews , 1 comment so far

If you believe that climate change is a frightening reality, that ecosystems have intrinsic value beyond that which they offer to humans, that we should consider the wider and long term environmental consequences of our actions, you’ve probably found yourself discussing these beliefs with someone who ‘just doesn’t get it’. It can feel like discussing the sunset with someone who is colourblind - what you mean by red and what they mean by red are completely different, and perhaps neither of you realise it.

When the conversation starts that way, there is almost no hope of it finishing with someone coming round to the other’s point of view, because there is no shared understanding to start with. Its even possible for both sides to come away having agreed to completely different things.

John S Dryzek’s ‘The Politics of the Earth’ is one of the most important books I’ve read about environmental politics and the condition of the planet in years. It doesn’t talk about the dying rainforests, the greenhouse effect or sea level rise, but it explains how we talk about these things, and why the communication between those who are working from different starting points is so often futile.

The core of the book is the explanation of 9 different ‘discourses’, frameworks or worldviews, in which conversations can be held. It shows what ‘basic entities’ are recognised, and points out that some frameworks, particularly those which are more market oriented, simply do not recognise the concept of an ecosystem at all. The basic assumptions about the relationships of people to the environment, and to each other are teased out - is nature there for humans to exploit, to protect or simply there for its own sake. Is cooperation a valid way of working or is competition the main driving force in human relationships? Who are the agents, or actors, in the world and what are their motives. Are we consumers, trying to accumulate as much as we can, or citizens, willing to work for the common good, or indeed both? What metaphors or rhetoric are used.

It might not be obvious that ‘Promethean’ which believes that the Earth and natural resources are there to be exploited and that it is a waste to not do so is an environmental discourse, but it is one of the more popular, particularly with some oil, gas and mining interests, many members of the Bush Administration, and the sort of farmer who regards setting aside land to return to the wilderness as almost sinful. By understanding it, it is possible to engage and, perhaps, convert.

The author explains some of the consequences of some of these discourses. For instance, deep ecology with its belief that we have a place in our ecosystem, but shouldn’t try to modify it much, returns to a hunting / gathering lifestyle and perhaps has as much in common with American ‘mountain men’ as it does with any other Green view.

It’s important to understand where these discourses fail to interact with other aspects of political life in the 21st century, which may lead to understanding of where the Green movement fails to get its message across, and where it succeeds. The discourses which are highly centralising and fail to recognise social / liberal democratic values, for instance, or the importance of the market in modern Western life, may find it difficult to make much headway if they have to revolutionise society before saving the planet.

Dryzek concludes that any successful discourse has to recognise modern liberal capitalism, not necessarily to accept it, but to find a way of dealing with it and to steer it to meet ecological needs, and has to have ‘the capacity to facilitate and engage in social learning in an ecological context’ meaning that it must be able to deal with the high degree of uncertainty and complexity inherent in environmental issues. Some of the more radical or dogmatic Green views, or those which propose a radical change to society without much idea of how to acheive that change, fail to meet these criteria.

By recognising these discourses, and understanding what we’re dealing with when trying to resolve a particular issue, there is much more chance that the Green movement will be successful.

A good example of this is economic growth, an anathema to Greens since the Report of the Club of Rome. A ’survivalist’ who believes that the end is nigh, and that little can be done to save the world, let alone humanity, would see all growth as wrong. However, an ‘ecological modernist’ influenced more by ideas of sustainability, might see a form of ‘growth’ in increasing investment in creating zero-waste technologies. In our society, the former is likely to have far less appeal than the latter.

Dryzek suggests that the different discourses have strengths that can be exploited in different situations and for different reasons it is also perhaps true that people at different times may operate in different frameworks. For myself, most of the time, I’m probably what he refers to as an ‘ecological modernist’ seeking solutions within a liberal capitalist framework, with a bit of judicious regulation and needing to engage people as citizens as well as consumers. In my quieter, more contemplative moments, I can be almost gaian with quite green radical ideas.

By understanding where people are coming from, and the discourse within which they operate, it may be easier to resolve issues. For a fairly simple example, consider the use of bottled water, a pet hobby horse of mine. I can see geologists a few hundred thousand years hence, refering to this as the Plastic Bottle Era, because of the stratum of plastic bottles which started building up in the late 20th century.

A Survivalist would immediately see this a wrong, and probably make it illegal or at least tax the disposal of the bottle. It would be yet another symptom of impending doom.

For a Promethean, this is fine - someone’s found a niche, created a market and there are people around who are gullible enough to part with £1 or more for a litre of water. There is no point in talking about food miles or landfill here, as those ideas just mean that a trucking company and a waste disposal company are also doing well out of it. And for heavens sake, water’s good for you, isn’t it?

An Administrative Rationalist would assess the impact of the bottled water industry on the UK, or perhaps at a regional or local authority level. They would consider the benefits (drinking water improves health, it is convenient in hot weather, VAT collected, jobs if there is a local bottling plant) as well as the costs (waste, increased CO2 emissions from transportation). They would look at a variety of policy options including perhaps leaving it be, taxing sales and improving plastic bottle recycling. They would select and implement one or more of these options, with some limited public consultation on the way.

A Democratic Pragmatist would appeal to people citizens, rather than consumers. Public consultations would happen, and be listened to. Perhaps a lay committee of citizens would be formed to discuss the problems and come up with solutions. People would be expected to consider their own selfinterest as well as the greater good. The problem of waste disposal would be couched in human-related terms - less parkland for recreation, possibility of leakage into watersources used by humans.

Economic Rationalists would ask consumers why on earth they think its a good idea to buy water for £1 a litre, rather than get it out of a tap for a penny. They might create a market in ‘waste bottle credits’ which can be traded between those who waste a lot of bottles and those who don’t.

Sustainable Development would see that this doesn’t work long-term, but might be interested in locally produced bottled water (rather than that freighted in from Fiji) and look at reusing the bottles.

Ecological Modernisation would require a full cost benefit analysis, including all factors in the lifecycle of the product - manufacture, distribution and final disposal. They might also consider reusing bottles, or selling durable, refillable bottles and water separately. It is possible that the full cost-benefit analysis, with all the costs internalised into the price of the water, might just render it unprofitable.

The Green Consciousness discourse is not a single discourse, but a grab bag including Deep Ecologists, Ecofeminists, Bioregionalists and even Lifestyle Greens. It’s pretty unlikely that any of these would be interested in bottled water, although the lighter Lifestyle Greens might be misled by greenwash advertising especially if it involved a little fudding about the quality of tap water.

Green Politics people, who are out there on the street protesting against globalistation, for the rights of the worlds poor and perhaps are animal liberationists would certainly not entertain the idea of bottled water, even if they could afford it.

A campaign against bottled water needs to appeal to all the points of view which would contemplate buying it. Excluding the first and last two discourses, which can reasonably be assumed to be with me on this one, a campaign should:

The campaign needs to be integrated, and happen at the same time so that people and decision-makers are hit from different angles simultaneously. Note that none of these suggestions includes a basic appeal that we have no right to pollute the earth this way - those to who that idea would have meaning are almost certainly drinking tap water anyway, and there is no point wasting time preaching to the converted, however pleasant and affirming that may be.

Cat Haiku July 23, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , 1 comment so far

I like this

And a small contribution from me

Summer heat wave saps
Languidly laze, paws in air
Cold shower? Hiss! Claw!

Perspectives on Lebanon July 22, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Politics , add a comment

I suppose its to be expected, but it’s clear that the US is letting Israel have a free hand to do whatever it wants to do to Lebanon, including rearming them, as this report in the NY Times discusses. The BBC picks this up very briefly, and I can’t find any mention of it on Al Jazeera yet.

Coverage of today’s raids, including the taking of Maroun al-Ras and the bombing of TV stations, varies somewhat between these three well-respected new sites.

The BBC emphasises the humanitarian crisis , and talks about the numbers killed on both sides.

The NY Times talks more about the plans to send Condoleeza Rice, and is only precise about Israeli casualties, with ‘numbers’ of Hezbollah and Lebanese killed or injured. It’s the only one to suggest that Lebanese Christians whose TV station was destroyed by Israeli bombers actually blame Hezbollah

Al-Jazeera has its journalists further into southern Lebanon than the other two, and reports more precisely on the effects on both sides. It also has more information on the US position than the BBC, and the US position is a vital element of this.

It seems that if you want a better understanding of what is going on in Lebanon, and the geopolitical forces around it, it’s worth reading all these sources. There are differences, but more of emphasis and perspective than outright bias. Al Jazeera clearly has an advantage in its ability to get its journalists right into the frontline, in a way that would perhaps be harder for the BBC and certainly for the NY Times. The NY Times is writing for an American audience, and it may have a better ability to get into the corridors of power there. The BBC seems a little off base with this, perhaps writing for a home audience that is as concerned about the British evacuation as the war itself.

Push the button

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : London , add a comment

You know those buttons on the escalators in the tube, the ones that say ‘Push here to stop the escalator’ and ‘£200 fine for improper use’.  I’ve been wanting to try that for ages, and yesterday I finally got the chance at Victoria.

An incredibly stupid tour leader with a group of about 50 youths had them all gathered at the bottom of the escalator while she tried to figure out if anyone was missing.  People were coming down the escalators in the rushour, and starting to pile up.  The lady in front of me was back stepping furiously when I pushed the button.

It stopped gently, but quickly.  Someone congratulated me for quick thinking, which quite surprised me, because I’d been watching the button for a few seconds before I reached it, thinking someone else would do it. 

And the stupid tour leader seemed completely oblivious to the problem she was causing.

I’m on the BBC!

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Blogging , add a comment

To everyone who’s come over from the BBC’s London Blogs feature, welcome!

Have a look around, make a comment, read and enjoy

Alternative Energy Shares July 21, 2006

Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Investing, Little Green Portfolio , add a comment

There’s a useful article on how alternative energy companies might develop over the next few years here, making the points that their values are tied to the price of oil, and that they are all fairly long term plays.

Although the alternative energy companies have done well over the last year, they’ve been badly affected by the recent market falls.

The oil price has gone up again in the last few days, presumably because of the war in Lebanon (and it is a war, not just a ‘crisis’ as the BBC insists), though hopefully that will calm down soon. Certainly the rise in the oil price in the last year or so owes at least as much to problems in the Middle East than any real consideration of oil reserves dropping.

In many ways, the move to alternative energy seems likely to be driven far more by geopolitical concerns, and the desire of nations to make their energy supply secure than by concerns about global warming and carbon emissions. Frankly, I don’t care how we get there, so long as we move away from our dependence on fossil fuels, and don’t take the dark road to nuclear.