Thoughts for the Day

I have been at jury duty all day today. It has been an educational experience I will never forget. During the breaks I have been reading Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save The World by Gary Hirshberg. Gary Hirshberg is currently the CE-Yo of Stonybrook Farms. It is a very interesting book. There are some very interesting things about the book which are not immediately obvious. Gary Hirshberg was a member of the New Alchemy Institute, one of the founding people who work on industrial ecology.

The New Alchemy Institute was a radical scientific community that worked on advanced ecological research covering things like hydroponics, aquaculture, and bioshelters. They built several closed ecosystem homes. Their experiment ran from 1971 to 1991. http://www.vsb.cape.com/~nature/greencenter/newalchemy.html

He does not mention some of the other members of the New Alchemy Instite like Dr. John Todd who helped found the discipline of industrial ecology. Dr. John Todd is considered the father of Living Machines a technology which uses plants to purify polluted water. His website is Ocean Arks International http://www.oceanarks.org/. Dr. John Todd also designs artificial wetlands for sewage treatment.

Also as I am reading the book, I found out that Group Danone has a 75% interest in Stonyfield Yogurt, the company which Gary Hirshberg runs. This is quite interesting. Group Danone helped found Grameen Danone the first social business according to Muhammad Yunus in the book, Creating A World Without Poverty.

There is also mention of Paul Hawken who works for the Rocky Mountain Institute. A lot of this book is about Industrial Ecology, or redesigning business along environmental lines to increase energy efficiency, use lean manufacturing and refurbishing techniques, introduce alternative energy, improve packaging design, and reduce pollution. It is not advertised as such, but this book describes this process quite well.

I will be taking notes on it. A lot of the upbeat message is couched in laymans terms to make the agenda of industrial ecology easier to follow.

I was looking at Entrecard, I noticed that a number of websites were coming from Technorati. Although, I did not have a favorites button until yesterday, I was being mentioned there. Technorati is one of the largest social networking sites on the web.

I also added a button from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This organization helps people online with legal issues. They have a legal advice guide for bloggers. Cory Doctorow one of the editors for Boing! Boing! started his career at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They are instrumental in protecting privacy and free speech on the internet. http://w2.eff.org/bloggers/

I have been very busy today, so I haven't had a whole lot of extra time to look at the internet.