January 31st, 2007 in Fire (Social) ·
I’ve seldom read anything with which I’ve disagreed as much as I have with Ayn Rand, in her series of essays The New Left: The Anti Industrial Revolution…
January 28th, 2007 in Metal (Technical) ·
A while ago I got addicted to the Africa Geography Game, a silly addictive Flash game that tests one’s knowledge of African geography.
At the back of my mind I’ve been considering writing a proper application that does something similar, but is much more flexible, testing capitals, flags, etc…
January 21st, 2007 in Fire (Social) ·
Following on from Organic food ‘worse for the environment’ – Economist, this time I’m looking at their attack on Fair Trade.
Their argument in effect boils down to describing the premium paid to Fair Trade producers as a subsidy, which therefore encourages inefficiencies and overproduction, just as government subsidies to farmers in Europe and North America do.
Of the three arguments made by the Economist, this was the most compelling, and the most interesting, but nevertheless was still flawed…
January 19th, 2007 in Water (Personal) ·
Thanks to Walton (who happily seems to be blogging again), I came across the Political Compass website…
January 19th, 2007 in Fire (Social) ·
Congratulations to everyone who contributed to the Telecoms Action Group’s ad that appeared in today’s Mail and Guardian.
It’s great to see South African consumers (how I dislike that word) getting together…
January 10th, 2007 in Metal (Technical) ·
I’ve decided to do some more work on the Wikipedia translation tool I started in 2005…
January 8th, 2007 in Fire (Social) ·
Thanks to GMWatch, via the SAFeAGE newsletter, I came across a list of good news stories in the global campaign against GMO’s. With permission, I include it in full below…
January 3rd, 2007 in Fire (Social) ·
Being involved in the Ethical Co-op, I’ve had a number of people gleefully tell me about the series of articles in the recent Economist, criticising Ethical food, in particuar organic, local and Fairtrade foods, the first two of which are key policies of the co-op.
I was quite looking forward to reading their argument, and doing the investigation necessary for a detailed refutation, but unfortunately the quality of their argument made the process a little less interesting than I’d been hoping.
The issue contained two articles, one freely available online (Voting with your trolley), while the other is locked (Ethical Food, although it was called Good Food in print…
