How to Get from Here to There?

Michel Bauwens asked Marvin Brown, author of the P2P Foundation Book of the Year in 2010, i.e. of “Civilizing the Economy“, to give us an idea how we can get :from here to there...”

“How do we get from here to there—from where we are to where we want to be? One can imagine a civic economy where economic trends are moving toward making provisions for everyone and ensuring that future generations have the capacities to meet their needs. But how do we get there?

Perhaps we cannot make it. The here is protected by powerful interests. It works quite well for a few. At the same time, there are many, perhaps 5 to 6 billion who would move to “there” at a moments notice if they could. Still, as long as the ownership of property gives legitimacy to rule, it is doubtful if we will see the change that justice and sustainability require.

The Egyptian uprising, for example, was a sign of hope. They affirmed their human dignity and demanded recognition of their human rights. Western nations joined them not be really supporting democracy, but by interfering with their people’s rule by “economic development” (corporate control). For the West, it seems that capitalism must control democracy instead of democracy controlling capitalism.

The here is the world of ownership; of property management. And the most significant property has become money. Money, the common currency (by common I means that it belongs to us all) that should be available to everyone so we can all participate in an economy of provisioning, has become a property that can be bought and sold as though it were a commodity. Money, as a means of exchange and as a token by which people can pay taxes and support the state, has become the property of banks. As long as we continue to live in the legacy of this Smithian economics of property, we will remain stuck in the “here” of the few enjoying their riches as the expense of the many.

I have no special insight into how we will actually move from here to there. I think I have pinpointed what prevents such a movement: the capitalistic magic of turning everything into a commodity. We are not commodities. Nature is a living system. Money is a provider of credit and a means of exchange. My proposal is that we not only recognize the failure of Smithian economics to create a world for all, but that we also take on the role of global citizen and in conversations with other citizens deliberate about how we move foreword: from here to there.

And what can I do? I can participate in a few of the millions of groups and organizations that are striving to move from here to there. Right now they may not seize the day, but they may quiet the night. In the future, who knows?”

Photo: Circus

Le Corbusier har vært en større ulykke for verden enn Hitler

Fra bombingen av Narvik

Nok et modernistisk krater! Hva er forskjellen fra ovenliggende bilde? Her fra Dubai. Foto: Andre Engels

Min lille by beliggende så vakkert til ved Mjøsa har Le Corbusiers disipler skamfert for lenge siden. I disse dager har de lagt sin elsk på Bjørvika, som forvandles fra industrihelvete til "image"-helvete, hvor stjernearkitektene fritt får utfolde sine ego. Ingen krig kunne gjort verre skade!

Noen vil hevde at Le Corbusier var et barn av sin tid. Tvert imot! VÅR TID ER ET BARN AV LE CORBUSIER!!!

Les Theodore Dalrymple's essay i City Journal: Do Sties Make Pigs?

Until quite recently, I had assumed that the extreme ugliness of the city in which I live was attributable to the Luftwaffe. I imagined that the cheap and charmless high rise buildings which so disfigure the city-scape had been erected of necessity in great gaping holes left by Heinkel bombers. I had spent much of my childhood playing in deserted bomb shelters in public parks: and although I was born some years after the end of the war, that great conflagration still exerted a powerful hold on the imagination of British children of my generation.

I discovered how wrong I was not long ago when I entered a store whose walls were decorated with large photographs of the city as it had been before the war. It was then a fine place, in a grandiloquent, Victorian kind of way. Every building had spoken of a bulging, no doubt slightly pompous and ridiculous, municipal pride. Industry and Labor were glorified in statuary, and a leavening of Greek temples and Italian Renaissance palaces lightened the prevailing mock-Venetian Gothic architecture.

"A great shame about the war," I said to the store assistant, who was of an age to remember the old days. "Look at the city now." 

"The war?" she said. "The war had nothing to do with it. It was the council." 

Les videre her.

Gamle trehus er mest miljøvennlige

Eldre trehus ved Andelva, Eidsvoll Verk

Les artikkelen i Aftenposten her.

Noe artikkelen ikke nevner er at gamle hus er langt mer menneskevennlige enn nye hus. Dette skyldes at de er evolverte strukturer, likesom naturen selv.

Rethinking Darwin to Uncover the Evolutionary Roots of Morality

Books by David Loye: 1) DARWIN’S LOST THEORY: BRIDGE TO A BETTER WORLD; 2) DARWIN’S 2nd REVOLUTION; Benjamin Franklin Press, 2010

Excerpted from a longer review in Tikkun by Dan Levine:

“When most people think of evolution, the first thing that comes to mind is either survival of the fittest or selfish genes. Yet the psychologist and system theorist David Loye argues this is a misreading of the gist of evolutionary theory and the intent of that theory’s founder. Moreover, misreading Charles Darwin has severe social consequences: it fosters the belief that the worst side of humanity is bound to win.

Darwin’s ultimate interest, Loye argues, was in the evolution of human moral sensitivity. He adds that Darwin’s celebrated principle of natural selection was just the first stage on the way to moral development. Loye founded the Darwin Project, with a council of over sixty natural and social scientists, to promote the view that moral development is at the heart of evolution.

Grunnlovstrær i høstdrakt

Klynge av ildfulle lerketrær 

Ble dirigert via den gamle E 6en i går, og stoppet ved gamle Nebbenes for å spise middag. Etterpå fikk jeg lyst til å ta noen bilder av grunnlovsbygningen, men der var det så mye restaureringsarbeider at det ikke ble noe greie på. Ruslet derfor en liten tur rundt i parken på Eidsvoll Verk nå på høsttampen. For full oppløsning av bildene klikk på bildeteksta.

Dverglønn, en litt skrudd utgave av lønnefamilien

Dverglønn i høstfarger

Så vandrer vi inn i vinteren

Olje, vekstøkonomiens drivstoff

With constant economic growth, our money system is relatively happy; without growth, it becomes utterly despondent. Without constant economic growth, preferably in the range of 3% (or more!), the collective pile of debts cannot be serviced out of new growth and so they begin to default. - Chris Martenson

Når avkastningen faller under tre prosent stopper kjerra! Oppbremsingen har begynt!! Er det ikke på tide vi begynner å tenke på hvordan vi da skal komme oss videre!!!

An Interview With Christopher Alexander

Wow! I just stumbled upon this great interview right now googeling the web. Thank you Rob Hopkins for making this interview!!!!

Read the interview on Energy Bulletin: An interview with "Pattern Language" author Christopher Alexander

Read the interview on Transition Culture: Exclusive to Transition Culture! An interview with Christopher Alexander

Chris looks very well at this picture, let's hope he'll live for more than 100 years! Photo: Rob Hopkins

Eudaimonia

Eudaimonia = A new economic paradigm based on fulfilling human potential — not creating and marketing useless stuff. It's so different from our current conception that I had to reach back to Ancient Greece for a name I thought captured its essence.

Read more here.

Policies for a Shareable City

The city of Sana'a, Yemen, is a shared creation. Photo: Tyabji

Neal Gorenflo presents a very important 20-part project:

“The Policies for a Shareable City series will cover 20 policy areas to inspire discussion among citizens and city leaders. Through a partnership with Shareable, Janelle Orsi and the Sustainable Economies Law Center team have taken up the thread started by Lawrence Grodeska at SHARE San Francisco. They will cover food, transportation, housing, culture, governance, entrepreneurship, and more. At the bottom of this post is the series index which we’ll hyperlink as we publish each article. The hope is that each post prompts you to share ideas in comments and take action in your city. And please copy, remix, and share the policy proposals as you see fit.

Together the proposals represent the underpinnings of a larger vision in which the common wealth in cities is made accessible to all residents; where the free flow of resources among citizens is aided by law, the built environment, culture, nonprofits, government, and enterprise; and where citizens are free to co-create great lives for each other in a vivifying cooperative framework. That said, the series is far from comprehensive. We think it’s a cornerstone, one that we invite you to build on.

Six Proposed Demands for the Occupy Wall Street Movement

Saxed from the P2P-blog:

1. People over profit: An economic democracy is an economy that subordinates profit to people, not the other way around.

2. Stakeholders over shareholders: An economic democracy is an economic system in which the voices, rights, and interests of all economic stakeholders — including employees, stockholders, communities, ecosystems, other species and future generations — are represented. Unlike our current economy where shareholders are given primacy, in an economic democracy no one stakeholder is granted a disproportionate degree of power and privilege.

3. Better not bigger: In order to reorient the economy towards people and all stakeholders, we have to release it from the captivity of profit. In an economy geared towards GDP growth, the bottom line is the bottom line, and protecting it means suppressing wages, slashing payrolls, passing on costs to other people, other places, and other times. Most importantly, our economy has outgrown the physical limits of the planet, and saving civilization means stopping growth. A democratic economy should be a steady-state economy where existing wealth is distributed fairly, and where economic health is measured by true indicators of social welfare rather than the blunt and archaic tool of GDP. The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy is a useful resource for steady-state solutions.

4. Main Street not Wall Street : The design of our financial system undermines true markets and productive community-based enterprises in favor of reckless speculation. It is designed to suck wealth away from communities and towards the corporate elite. A good blueprint here is the New Economy Working Group’s report How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule.

5. One employee, one vote: An economic democracy is an economy where companies are built around the concept of one worker, one vote. In an economic democracy a company is a community of employees, where the employees, as full citizens of that community and the true source of company profit, decide how to invest that profit in the community. In this way, an economic democracy is distinct from both capitalism and socialism — both variations of economic oligarchy — where private boards on the one hand and public bureaucrats on the other decide how the profits workers generate are disposed of.

6. Economic Constitutionalism: In the United States Constitution the framers properly defined the powers and limits to the powers of the powerful institutions that govern our society. In an age where corporations have become as powerful as any institution of government, and have amassed undue influence over the policies of those institutions, their powers need to be defined and constitutionally limited just like any institution of government.

Photo: David Shankbone

Wow! In the Norwegian media the newspapers are full of articles about Occupying Wall Street as just a protest movement without any direction or substance. But these principles are brilliant!

I really hope the protesters will not subscribe to any kind of ideology, to repeat the 20th century of ideologies. Let the 21th century become the century not of ideology, but of sustainable, living technology. Not the technology of death, which in combination with ideology has destroyed our world.

For this purpose I’ll strongly encourage all participants of this movement (and all others) to read the absolutely fabulous series Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros are running in Metropolis Magazine these days: The Technologies of Christopher Alexander.

Personally I don’t think it’s occasionally (although not intended) these series are released in these changing times. I see the technologies developed by Christopher Alexander as fundamental for a sustainable future of our societies and our planet.

Please read these series and circulate them!

Related reading:

• Turning Occupation into Lasting Change

Jeg savner fortauet!

Storgata i Gjøvik etter oppgraderinger sommeren 2011

Personlig savner jeg fortauet. Hvordan kan man kose seg på en fortausrestaurant uten fortau? Kanskje har det noe å gjøre med Alexanders tredje "livsverdi"?

BOUNDARIES is the way in which the field-like effect of a center is strengthened by the creation of a ring-like center, made of smaller centers which surround and intensify the first. The boundary also unites the center with the centers beyond it, thus strengthening it further. - Christopher Alexander

Den nye gågata i Gjøvik, ikke fullt så sjarmerende som gågata i Lillehammer, men muligens et par hakk bedre enn Hamars gågate

Kanskje er jeg negativ, men jeg reagerer også på det dominerende inntrykket av massive betongheller. Det er som jeg kan kjenne et snev av Le Corbusier. I et leserbrev i OA var det en som kalte nyskapningen "fra asfaltgate til betonggate". Jeg tror han har et poeng.

We Can Recycle Plastic

Less than 10% of plastic trash is recycled -- compared to almost 90% of metals -- because of the massively complicated problem of finding and sorting the different kinds. Frustrated by this waste, Mike Biddle has developed a cheap and incredibly energy efficient plant that can, and does, recycle any kind of plastic.

For en retur til en menneskelig, person til person, biourbanistisk arkitektur

I den første delen av denne artikkelen i Shareable, analyserer Nikos Salingaros og Michael Mehaffy hva som er galt, epistemologisk og kulturellt, med nåværende urbanistiske og arkitektoniske praksis, som ofte skaper "patogene" byrom.

I andre del, som jeg gjengir utdrag fre nedenfor, utforsker forfatterne det positive alternativet.

Utdrag fra artikkelen til Michael Mehaffy og Nikos Salingaros:

Foto: Etan J. Tal

“The desires and gut reactions of the community are the very essence of a great, living city, as opposed to a banal and dysfunctional one. The dysfunction of such image-based urban places — sadly all too common in the post-war era — is what has sent many people fleeing for the suburbs, with their simplistic ideas of retreat into a private garden. (Generations of developers have made fortunes by encouraging this suburban flight through the opposite misleading images: of mansions sitting in vast lawns). This too has turned into a dysfunctional failure of traffic congestion, blighted strip development, and isolated, car-dependent homes.

Clearly, if we want a sustainable form of settlement, our buildings will have to work much harder to create a convivial, salubrious environment for all human beings — not just appease the elite connoisseurs of object-buildings. This means, among other things, that the problem of “architectural myopia” be taken seriously, just as we take night blindness seriously among drivers. We need corrective lenses.

At the End of the Road of Capitalism

We just passed the end of of socialism, soon we'll see capitalism pass by as well. Let permaculture fill the gap!

Ironically, science itself has long since moved on. We now understand pretty clearly that the legacy of this linear approach is a series of disastrous, unintended consequences, compounding with each successive project: failures in the social environment, the ecological environment and, now, the economic system that governs the sustainability of our resources. We are generally aware that the old paradigm must give way to something more life-like—more able to create resilience and sustainability, and more able to serve the real needs of human beings. We understand that we must move beyond the old “Ponzi Scheme” models of depletion economics—leaving tremendous irresolvable problems to our grandchildren—and find a more regenerative kind of technology, and a more sustainable kind of settlement pattern, to counter the unfolding global disaster of modern industrial development. - Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros

Immanuel Wallerstein on the nature of the current bifurcation

Picture from my  PRI-article Anti-Pattern Capitalism

Related reading:

• End-of-Growth Uprising Goes Global

Integrative Ecosocial Design

Aranya, my PDC-teacher, explaining the five zones of permaculture.

Wikimedia.

On my PDC-Course in Sweden I learned about the term Integrative Ecosocial Design, and I fell in love with it. Here follow the history and description for this term, from Gaia University:

This descriptive name, Integrative Ecososial Design, arose from observations and understandings gleaned from years of work and action in the permaculture and ecovillage fields, and from around leading-edge developments appearing elsewhere. Through the work experience we understood that permaculture folk, for example, see most problems of human society stemming from destructive land use practices, such as industrial agriculture, and that switching to sustainable and regenerative horticulture, repairing ecosystems and living lifestyles based primarily on resources derived from biological processes would enable us to reconfigure human societies to function within the carrying capacity of Earth.

Ecovillage-focused people often describe the primary problem as a lack of spiritual awareness, hierarchical decision making systems, poor housing and physical community design and tend to respond by establishing consensus-based, experimental intentional communities wherever they can find land and permission.

While there is substantial value in both of these approaches neither of these views seemed complete, and each group, for quite a while, was actively antagonistic towards the other - the one considering the other flimsy and "new agey", the other seeing itself as spiritually superior to the grunts planting trees and digging swales.


From our explorations of the dazzling array of leading-edge design developments, we considered Integral Theory, Social Ecology, Human Ecology and more. There's much to commend in each of these ways of thinking, yet none manages to combine the practical, pragmatic, action-oriented, purposeful, leaderful, clear approach we're seeking to engender through Gaia University. Here are some brief sketches...

Integral Theory has some powerful conceptual models, but tends towards extreme abstract conceptualization, attracts esoteric thinkers and seems to be liable to that tiresome academic dynamic of seeking to value and create elegant/obscure philosophically dense theory above grounded action.

Social Ecology has great social analysis roots and capacities and a fine vision, and meanwhile generates impenetrable and lengthy arguments for change seemingly typical of the intellectual left-wing that places it beyond the patience of anyone without a good deal of time and a background in unpicking convoluted, verbose scholarly masterpieces.

Human Ecology, which unlike the two above, has been generated from within the conventional academy, has a thorough academic pedigree and long history. Part of its problem, for our purposes, is that it is still embedded in the establishment, which curtails its ability to act for deep social change lest it bite the hand that feeds it.

Thus at Gaia University we birthed the field of Integrative Ecosocial Design, which draws on the most practical elements of the above, but has its own character as an approachable, action-focused, practical/thoughtful practice of praxis.

What's In a Name?

• Integrative to emphasize a process and direction (rather than "integrated", a claim too bold, or "integral" which is rather like a branding).
• Ecosocial to indicate a balance between ecology, land-use and all social and economic aspects of human society.
• Design to underline our primary goal of bringing as many people as possible to a place of empowerment from which they can notice that the behavior, structures and institutions of societies and the people within them are products of human thinking and efforts. Thus all these aspects of culture are amenable to deconstruction and redesign. 

A Farmer in a Traditional Culture “Knew” How to Make a Beautiful House for Himself

Traditional farmhouse from Løten, Norway. Full resolution available here.

A farmer in a traditional culture “knew” how to make a beautiful house for himself. We envy him, and think that only he was able to do this because his culture made it possible. But this power the primitive farmer had lay in his pattern language.

And if the people of the town now have a pattern language which is whole, they have the same power, exactly. Whatever act of building or repair is contemplated – building a bench, a flower bed, a room, a terrace, a small cottage, a whole house, a group of houses, a remaking of a street shop, a café trellis, a complex of public buildings, even the replanning of a neighborhood – they have the power to do it for themselves. – The Timeless Way of Building, by Christopher Alexander, page 353

Related reading:

• The Pattern Technology of Christopher Alexander

Some Facts on Organic Farming

The Rodale Institute’s 30-year
Farming Systems Trial report 
(1.3mb PDF)

Facts from the 30-year study:

• Organic yields match conventional yields.
• Organic outperforms conventional in years of drought.
• Organic farming systems build rather than deplete soil organic matter, making it a more sustainable system.
• Organic farming uses 45% less energy and is more efficient.
• Conventional systems produce 40% more greenhouse gases.
• Organic farming systems are more profitable than conventional.

Read more here.

From the Mara Soil - a Film About Simple and Natural Solutions to Poverty, Hunger and Disease

Read more here.

Vindmøller før og nå

Vindmølle ved Île de Noirmoutier. Foto: Wladyslaw

Foto: Erik Baas

Floor-Ceiling Vaults

Loggia dei Lanzi. Photo: MatthiasKabel

Problem We seek a ceiling vault shape which will support a live load on the floor above, form the ceiling of the room below, and generate as little bending and tension as possible so that compressive materials can be relied on.

Solution Build floors and ceilings in the form of elliptical vaults which rise between 13 and 20 per cent of the shorter span. Use a type of construction which makes it possible to fit the vault to any shaped room after the walls and columns are in position: on no account use a prefabricated vault.

- Pattern 219. (Please note that this is a limited version of pattern 219. The original pattern is at nine pages, with beautiful and useful illustrations.)

Image Boxes

Boxed Into a Box (Boxes) of Images. Photo: KlausFoehl

Related reading:

• Architectural myopia: designing for industry, not people

Er ditt hus et plastposehus?



Les mer:

• Isolasjon
• Økologiske trehus
• Naturlig ventilasjon og pustende konstruksjoner

Modernistenes fornektings- og forføringsstrategier

Close-up of the dorsal fin of a male dragonet. Photo: Hans Hillewaert

Nok et fantastisk essay av Nikos A. Salingaros! Med en gang jeg så dette flunkende nye essayet av Salingaros tok jeg kontakt med PRI-redaktør Craig Mackintosh med spørsmål om han ville trykke det. Svaret var positivt, og jeg kontaktet deretter Salingaros, som velvillig lot oss gjengi det, som nummer to i verden.

Modernismen og modernistisk arkitektur er en tragedie fra A til Å. Allikevel, gjennom globale maktstrukturer og manipulerende kontroll over mediene, fortsetter modernistenes falske trosdogmer å infisere våre samfunn. Personlig ser jeg mitt liv som mer eller mindre ødelagt i modernitetens kjølvann, med sitt totale fravær av naturlige livsmønstre/"patterns" og av naturlig/naturens geometri. Men dette er av underordnet betydning. Langt verre er det at de har forpestet min lille datters store verden!

Les og lær mer om de kreftene som har formet/former vårt moderne samfunns totale meningsløshet:

Cognitive Dissonance and Non-adaptive Architecture: Seven Tactics for Denying the Truth

Se også Jim Kalb sin kommentar til Nikos essay her.

Er hubbert-modellen intergalaktisk?

Norsk oljeproduksjon illustrert med hubbert-modellen, men dette er også en modell over hvorfor vi ikke har blitt kontaktet av intergalaktiske sivilisasjoner.

50-tallets rettlinjede og oppadgående progresjonslinje vil måtte erstattes av hubbertkurven, samme hvor mye våre politikere velger å spille strutsepolitikk og stikker hodet i sanda, i møte med denne intergalaktisk gyldige kurven. Hubbert-modellen er universell, og derfor har vi ikke blitt, og kommer vi ikke til å bli kontaktet av fremmede sivilisasjoner.

Photo: Legonaut

Les Ugo Bardis fremragende analyse: The Hubbert hurdle: revisiting the Fermi Paradox.

Se også disse to flotte animasjonene!

Relatert lesning:

• Why not space?
• Stranded resources

Økonomi er ingen vitenskap

Oslo børs, en kvasivitenskapens katedral. Foto: Valugi

In her book Econned, Yves Smith describes how the arrogance of economists has led to a very biased view of the world:

“…they assume that only they are qualified to opine about matters economic. That in turn produces two considerable biases. First, if an argument about economics comes from a non-economist and does not happen to fall in line with the orthodoxy, it must be wrong. It will be rejected even if it contains useful information. Secondly, the scientific mantle gives economists the trump card in policy discussions, even though, as we have seen (elsewhere in her book – BD) those aspirations are not born out in practice.

“When an elite succeeds in monopolising discussion on a given topic, an additional danger is that members of the privileged caste can become overconfident. The economics discipline has had, in fact, attacks of hubris.” (Yves Smith, Econned Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 p62-63).

As Yves Smith makes clear, the status and power of economics and economists is connected to its claim to be a social science. So let’s be clear…..it is no such thing.

What is currently taught as economics cannot possibly be described either as a science or even, for that matter, as a study of society. I make that assertion because the track record of economists in prediction is so poor that it is laughable for them to claim scientific status. This failure of predictive power has been pointed out over and again – particularly after the failure of the bulk of the economics profession to predict the collapse of 2007/8.

Les resten av artikkelen: Economics is not a social science

Fra kvasikrystaller til Alhambras mosaikk

Diffraksjonsmikroskopi av kvasikrystall. Foto: Materialscientist

Et lignende ikke-repeterende mønster (sekskanter) i mosaikk fra Alhambra. Foto: Gruban

Aperiodic mosaics, such as those found in the medieval Islamic mosaics of the Alhambra Palace in Spain (shown above), have helped scientists understand what quasicrystals look like at the atomic level. In those mosaics, as in quasicrystals, the patterns are regular -- they follow mathematical rules -- but they never repeat themselves. (Credit: © cbomers / Fotolia)

Alhambra, en av Christopher Alexanders store favoritter, ikke uten grunn. Inspirerende hvordan fysikkens lover og naturen mønstre reflekteres overalt i tradisjonell arkitektur, fra tiden før modernistene kom og raserte vår verden.

Les mer:

• Det umulige mønsteret
• 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: 'Quasicrystals' Once Thought Impossible Have Changed Understanding of Solid Matter

Scaling Hierarchy

I’m giving out a challenge by claiming that the vast majority of buildings all around the world before the industrial age obey universal scaling (and actually continuing into early industrial years). This holds for all different cultures, all different periods, and is not restricted to a few carefully-selected buildings that I might refer to here. This claim can be documented by on-site measurements, and then the term “universal” becomes apparent, since it applies to indigenous architectures, both vernacular and monumental. Universal scaling is therefore innate to how human beings create forms, and is not a feature tied to any culture. – Twelve Lectures on Architecture, by Nikos A. Salingaros, page 25-26

Dharmaraya Swamy Temple, in Bangalore, India. Photo: Muhammad Mahdi Karim

Stowe Boyd on Hacking the Food System: Social Food - Taking Food Back From Corporations

I believe that we will start to see a new factor: social food cooperatives. Social tools will lead to an alternative food system to the extent that people choose to spend more time involved in the production and distribution of food. This does not mean that everyone will become a full-time farmer, but average people will begin to dedicate more time to local food production and distribution than they have in the past 50 years. This could entail growing food in a greenhouse with five other families, working at a food coop, or keeping chickens on the roof of your New York City brownstone and trading eggs for produce with neighbors. - Stowe Boyd

Read the whole article here.

Photo: Spencer Hill

Related reading:

• The Pleasures of Eating

Mineralske byggematerialer

• Gunnmaterialer
• Tegl
• Skumglass
• Leire som byggemateriale
• Kalksandstein
• Porebetong / Lettbetong
• Skumbetong
• Betong
• Gulvavrettingsmasser
• Hempcrete
• Murmørtel
• Puss

Palestina-hebreere

Relative genetiske ulikheter i Y-kromosonet i Midtøsten, sammenlignet med noen andre nasjoner. Jemenittjøder har for eksempel mer lik stamfar med palestinere enn med askenasiske jøder. Illustrasjon: Det Biologiske mennesket, av Terje Bongard, s. 156

Det blir helt feil å kalle palestinerne for palestina-arabere, palestina-hebreere er mye nærmere den genetiske virkeligheten. Dagens palestinere er etterkommere av jøder som ble igjen i landet etter at romerne drev ut byborgerne og eliten, de hadde ingen interesse av å reise rundt for å forfølge fattige bønder i hver en krok. Av konformitetspress valgte mange jøder i Palestina å omvende seg til islam, men dette gjorde dem ikke til arabere mer enn i det ytre.

Videre er navnet palestinere villedende, da dette er utledet av ordet filistere eller "philistines", et fønikisk folkeslag som levde på dagens Gazastripe. Å kalle palestinerne palestina-arabere blir derfor villedende i dobbelt betydning.

Sannheten er at palestinere og jøder er brødrefolk. Kan vi igjen makte å forene dem i deres felles hebraiske opphav?

Videre lesning:

• Hvis - palestinere - egentlig er jøder - og det kan bevises - hva vil den kunnskapen kunne bidra til?
• Hvem er palestinerne?
• Kampen om identi­teten