Sacred economics, and what is really worth something?

PP showed us this amazing video tonight, about what economics is about and what it should be about:

 It is very interesting and great, watch it! 

It questions our current society's focus on money, natural resources, lack of sharing and giving...  I want that Gift Economy that he is talking about.  Maybe, just like Paying it forward, we should be Giving it forward more in our lives.

Iceland review day 4 and 5

Lavafield (hraun) from 1783.

Mountains on the south coast.

Yesterday was by far the most exciting day. The offroad bus did not show up, but an icelander with a monster truck did, with room for us. The tour he was taking us was more of a track than a road, and it went through lava fields with big caves and tunnels, over rivers and on snow fields. It was great! We had perfect clear sky and view over three jökulareas. He drove us up to the Lakigigjar, from the eruption 1783, a row of 25 eruption cones. Overall, we had a fantastic trip. In the late evening, I took a photo tour in the midnight sun. Pics are in the camera, so I show them later. 

Today we have seen Gullfoss and Geysir and ended the day with a bath in natural hot spring water and steam, in a newbuilt spa in Laugarvatn. They had built the spa over a natural steam spring, so there were no termostats. If it got too warm you could open the door, or go outside! Under the floor we could hear the water boiling. Amazing!

Geothermal spa in Laugarvatn

Stamp of the day: boat with little outboard motor

This Swedish stamp from 2002 invokes many Swedish summer memories for me.  A simple wooden boat, with oars for slow moving and fishing, and then the little engine for the times when you have to get home for dinner or the wind is in your face and you need some extra help.  Our sailing boat had a slightly larger version than this, a 7.5 hp Mercury outboard motor, and when it was stormy you really hoped it would start.  It did, because it had replaced an older, smaller engine that was not so reliable.  Maybe that was an Evinrude, I don't remember.  But most of the time we sailed in our 18-foot sailing boat with 5 people and two dogs for weeks... the outboard engine was just for storms, when the wind was wrong, or when you had to get through locks or under bridges. 

Stamp of the Day: Biomass energy

Here comes the forest, sliced up and ready to be put into the furnaces of the bioenergy plants.  Stamp from Sweden, simple and clean graphics.

Stamp of the day: the power of wind and lines

We are continuing our little series (2 so far) of energy related stamps, here with a Swedish stamp featuring wind power (vindenergi).  I love the clean lines... Sweden stuck to real engraved stamps for along time, and some are still done this way, but I think most American stamps by now are made with less time-consuming graphical techniques. The engraver of this one, Czeslaw Slania, was the master of Swedish engraving, and in fact, the world master of stamp engraving and world famous for his work for 28 countries.  He was hired by the Swedish postal office in 1959. Here is the 1000th stamp he engraved: link.

So, what now?

I guess I'll start with saying hi to all the readers of this blog.

Hi! :)

I am one of the relatives and I said to LS this spring that I felt like starting to write on this blog - I had so many ideas and things I wanted to share. Well, summer got the best of me and my login got left unused in a dark corner of my computer. But LS latest blog about the future and now really got me thinking, so here goes my first blog entry. I guess the next one will be a proper presentation of myself.

So, regarding the future. I recognize a lot of the same patterns, problems and attitudes here in Sweden that LS describes. And from a lot of the countries I have been visiting too. But what strikes me is that this is only true in the Western countries. If you go to Asia - China, Vietnam and even the really poor countries like Mongolia or Cambodia - you will meet a huge optimism, big beliefs and hopes for the future and lots of ideas for how the world will evolve.

I believe that this is natural in many ways. The 20th century has been marked by a huge increase in living standards in the West - we have moved from large families and low life expectancy to smaller families and a very high age. This has been followed by a rocketing in economy and growth - and with this comes of course optimism, dreams and thinking about the future for humanity.

This is what is now happening in Asia, in South America and in some parts of Africa - they are all moving towards a much better life and feel as optimistic as the West did 50 years ago.

The West on the other hand have in many ways reached a plateau of living standards and we also have to face that more and more people reach the same plateau, thus losing the feeling of having a superior life. With this also comes problems of environment and food for everyone - problems caused by us spending a lot more of Earth's resources than we should.

Our economies and societies also seems to be shaped after always growing. They are made to becoming bigger and when we reach the plateau of economical growth we start facing a lot of problems. This can be seen in US now where a lot of tough decisions has to be made and perhaps even clearer in Greece. The politicians in Greece are heavily pressed by the rest of the world to take some very tough decisions and also extremely pressed by their own people who are pissed off - pissed off by having to lower their standards, their salaries and their way of life, due to no fault of their own. But perhaps that's what it takes when a country suddenly reaches the plateau and is no longer growing? In that case, US and many other countries have some very tough times ahead...

So, what will happen? I believe that we will live with this despair for a while. Until we either come up with a way of society, a way of living and an attitude that can handle not growing and not becoming better - or until the next explosion in living standards. What will trigger this? My guess is when we solve the energy problems for good by really getting fusion to work - and when (not if) that happens I also hope that this jump in living standards will reach the whole world within a decade, rather than waiting more than a century to spread over the continents. And with this I also think we'll restart space flight and start having other dreams for the future of humankind.

So it's really a bright future ahead - as long as we learn to deal with living in the now for a while. :)

Bits and pieces from the internet: steam, meat, and mean edition

Interesting article in The New York Times about a car designed to run on steam, but never did, the Paxton Phoenix from 1960.

A new delicious monkey species have been reported on by the satirical magazine The Onion (funny!)

I am steaming after I discovered that someone stole my ATM card number and the pin too (how?) and have been taking out over $1700 dollars from my bank account.  The bank tells me I will get the money back.  Why are some people so MEAN? 

Apropos mean, they have started to steal human hair from salons.  What is next - cutting of a long braid or ponytail from someone's head in the subway?

In case you missed it, all three nuclear reactors in Fukushima have had nuclear meltdowns and are leaking radioactive water into the ocean.  The Japanese say a total shutdown will be done in 6-9 months (which is questionable if it is even doable).  Let's hope for no more tsunamis or big earthquakes between now and then... 

Poor world, too much is happening to it and us right now - tsunamis, earthquakes, flooding Missisippis, tornados, rain and drought....

Bits and pieces from the internet, business edition

One company that I really like, Burt's Bees, who make nice natural lipbalms and schampoos, are now owned by Clorox.  Ick, how did that happen?  I found out because I was thinking about investing a little money in LUSH stocks, a similar company, but it turns out that it is still privately owned with no stocks (which I now think is a good thing).  Clorox is not mentioned on Burt's Bees website, hmmm... I wonder why?. Read more here about green-washing and big nasty companies gobbling up small nice ones.

The New York Times have decided that if you read a lot of their articles online you will have to pay a monthly fee and become a subscriber.  However, if you follow a link from a blog or other media site, you should be able to read it for free. If you read something on an iphone it costs your more than from a laptop, and if you are rich and have an ipad, you have to pay 133% more than if you just have a laptop ($35 per month).  I think they are crazy.  So, from March 28, there might be much fewer New York Times articles e-mailed by me to some of you, but maybe more posted here on the blog for you to see.  We will see how it goes. 

Newsweek has changed owner and editor, and I like most of it so far, except for the font for the headings.  But the articles are more interesting, and less about celebrities and more daring and thoughtful. Tina Brown, the current editor, is going in the right direction.  I have subscribed since the early 1990s, wow, that is 20 years, and a year ago I was ready to quit, but now I am giving them a 2nd chance.   NPR, International Women's Day, Ignorant Americans... that is a bit different from before.

These strange black and white photos are not straightforward business.  What is going on here?

I wonder what the French business woman that praised nuclear energy as the best thing ever in the recent Newsweek is thinking now, since her article was published just a few days before the Japanese tsunami and earthquake that led to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.  She is probably thinking just the same thing as before, but many other people are not.

The same viewpoint was featured in this 1 minute energy video which is rather cool until it ends with a nuclear power plant and a city were mindless people dance to rock music on a roof of a building.  But the graphics were good, steam trains and viking ships... it is just the ending that really bothers me, especially considering what has happened in Japan.  Guess where the oldest American nuclear reactor is?  Yep, in New Jersey. 

Food and radioactivity, a good read

There is a very good and clear blogpost on Daily Kos about radioactivity in food, and I recommend reading it if you want to know more.  It also reprinted this excellent description of the difference between being 'exposed' to 'contaminated', from a Vermont brochure:

If you have a manure pile and you are close enough to smell it, you are exposed. If you go across the road to your neighbor’s house you will not expose or contaminate them. If, on the other hand, you also step in the manure, you are now contaminated. If you go across the road to your neighbors’ house without decontaminating your shoe or boot, you will expose your neighbors and probably contaminate their house. It you do contaminate your neighbor’s house, they may also contaminate themselves. 

Radiation is similar. An exposed but uncontaminated person or animal does not pose a risk to other people or animals. Contamination can be detected with radiation meters. External contamination can be removed by vigorous washing with soap and water.

This catastrophe in Japan brings back memories of the Chernobyl accident ('Tjernobyl' in Swedish) in 1986, during my last year of high school in Sweden.  The day or two after it happened me and friends were scheduled to leave for a birding trip to Hungary during spring break, but since we didn't know where the radioactive cloud would land we aimed for southern France and the Camargue delta instead. We had no books, plans, or maps for southern France, but we couldn't risk going to a place that might mean we got radioactive dust on us.  

When we came back to Sweden all cars wheels were checked with Geiger counters at the border, and we found out that the cloud had changed direction and hit the Baltic countries and Scandinavia.  For many years thereafter you could (=should) not each wild mushrooms, berries, and reindeer meat from northern Sweden, due to Cesium 137 contamination.  The reindeers eat the lichens which has accumulated the radioactive particles.