Clean water is something that most of my readers probably quite happily take for granted. Despite the fact that in most Cities the systems we use to clean and transport water are among some of the most decrepit parts of the infrastructure of the communities we live in, we assume that when we turn on [...]
{ 0 comments }
Image by Barrybar via Flickr If you want to get a picture of the last twenty or thirty years of the oil industry, then Oil – Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century by Tom Bower is a must read. Released in June 2010, it just missed out on recording one of the biggest [...]
{ 1 comment }
As a society, (or a species, take your pick), we are terrible at planning and strategising much further than what we are planning to eat for dinner. while Japanese companies plan for world domination in five generations, we are stuck in a revolving door of problems that need immediate attention. But even when we get [...]
{ 4 comments }
My whole life is surrounded by technology that has been discovered or invented in the past 50 years. I am a product of Generation-X, the epitome of consumerism. I love and want more technology, I crave the latest gadget, I consume therefore I am. But really, I am a poor example of a consumer, I [...]
{ 8 comments }
Or “Why I don’t trust BP to clean up anything” I haven’t dedicated much space here to the ongoing saga going down in Louisiana as BP and the US government fumble to maintain the appearance of control of the situation. I’ll leave the blow-by-blow account of these mishandling to people with more time and patience [...]
{ 1 comment }
It might just be the feeds that I follow in Google Reader, but I have been inundated with blow-by-blow posts, articles, pictures and video of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I don’t want this to be yet another post on the oil spill, and although it is seriously enough to put the average pro-oil man [...]
{ 2 comments }
I’m slowly whittling my way through the pile of great books on my desk, I haven’t done a book review for a while, so here goes. Survival + is 390 pages of well reasoned thoughts on the economy, resource depletion, climate change and how these things are likely to impact your household, communities and the [...]
{ 1 comment }
Technology changes everything, in this case, it brings an old map to life. My job as a City Engineer takes me into the past quite often, and the ability to use historical mapping as a tool to determine the cause of issues today can be quite important. Since Google Earth and Google Maps have been [...]
{ 2 comments }
