Governing the Commons

Elinor Ostrom delivers her Nobel Prize lecture


Found out about it on permaculture.tv

Beautiful Oven Stoves

Low-tech Magazine: Sunbathing in the living room: oven stoves and heat walls

The energetic output of an oven stove is 80 to 90 percent, compared to 40 to 50 percent for metal stoves or central heating appliances, and only 10 to 15 percent for a fireplace – where most heat escapes via the chimney. One of the most striking features of a (wood fuelled) oven stove is the stokehold, which looks ridiculously small compared to the stove itself.

Doorsnede kachelofen Thanks to the high otput, a modest masonry heater or tile stove (heating a room of 60 square meters) only needs 6 cubic meters of wood per year: one tree. If you have even a small garden, you can easily fuel your oven stove by means of your own cuttings – thin wood is very well suited for tile stoves, although it needs to be dry enough.

Search Engine Suggestions Optimzation (SESO)

Advanced ORM: Influence Google Search Suggest & Sublistings | Search Engine Journal

There are two such nightmares I’d like to discuss today: negative terms in Google’s search suggestions and negative sub-listings on sites who can’t be shaken from the top 10.

Aquaponics

Aquaponics, a Gardening System Using Fish and Circulating Water - NYTimes.com

What feeds his winter crop of lettuce is recirculating water from the 150-gallon fish tank and the waste generated by his 20 jumbo goldfish. Wastewater is what fertilizes the 27 strawberry plants from last summer, too. They occupy little cubbies in a seven-foot-tall PVC pipe. When the temperature begins to climb in the spring, he will plant the rest of the gravel containers with beans, peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers — all the things many other gardeners grow outside.

Avoid Credid Card fees when travelling aborad

Your Money - Credit Card Costs Are Cut, but Foreign Fee Stays - NYTimes.com

But if you don’t want to contribute to the card issuers’ bottom lines while you’re on vacation, there is a simple alternative. When you travel outside the United States or make purchases that originate there, use a credit card from Capital One, which charges nothing for the privilege. Or try the Schwab Invest First Visa, which works the same way. Cards from smaller banks or credit unions may have similar policies.

TreeCrops

Here is a book that inspired permaculture's founder Bill Mollison.

John Forde's Bank

My grandfather was a banker in Sligo town in Ireland.

Here is a quote from last weekend's Irish Independent comparing how he ran the bank with the current goings on...

Sir -- Many years ago, the AIB branch in Sligo was known as 'John Ford's Bank'; named after a long serving manager who was respected for his knowledge and integrity.

The distressed article by a businessman (Sunday Independent, Feb 7, 2010) on how banks in Ireland operate must be very offensive to old style managers who valued long term relationships.

Ireland's banks got too big for their boots and blew their capital on crazy property speculative projects.

When the dust finally settles on Irish banks, they will need to be broken up into smaller regional units. Managers should be recruited who have local knowledge and have more discretion as to lending limits. We need more John Fords in Irish banking and fewer Masters of the Universe.

I have cut and pasted - see the whole article here.