Category: food

Categories
computing food

Time and plants

Dawna Ballard and Juliet Norton [ 52:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dr Dawna Ballard is from the University of Texas. She studies how our working lives shape our experience of time in multiple ways, both personally and professionally. She tells us the industrialisation of time, with effects including fast-paced work environments, multi-tasking, long-term planning, and time-management issues. Noting the basis of sustainability as ethics extended over time and space, we talk about the construction and representation of time as a vehicle for our lives.

Juliet Norton is based at the University of Central Florida. She describes herself as a “grounded technologist”. Her proposal for support for domestic plant guilds is a novel application of sustainable computing.

Categories
food permaculture planning transition towns

James Samuel

James Samuel

James Samuel - Transition Towns [ 59:09 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In the show that started out being about frogs and metamorphosed into a show about transition, James Samuel talks about Transition Towns in New Zealand. James says that he aims to spend no more than 20% of his time talking about what needs to change, and instead focuses on demonstrating a more vibrant future. This is an inspiring story.

Shane’s number of the week: 2788 is the number of species that are endangered in New Zealand.

Sam’s joined up thinking: How can we work together to think about what our places might look like in years to come? And how might we get there? Sam talks with Dr Olaf Schroth who mixes community involvement, modelling and visualisations of future scenarios. The full interview is on Sustainablelens.org.

(Our advertised guest Dr Phil Bishop was unable to join us. He has been rescheduled for August. Our apologies – but we know you’ll enjoy James Samuel instead).

Categories
education food organics permaculture

Michelle Ritchie

Michelle Ritchie [ 59:11 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Michelle Ritchie is an organics and permaculture edcuator with a background in resource management (she holds a Masters in Regional and Resource Planning).  Michelle is responsible for the ongoing development of Otago Polytechnic’s LivingCampus.    Michelle describes the transformation of Otago Polytechnic’s campus into an integration of community garden and focus of sustainability education.  People come to the garden, ask questions “how do I plant a bean?” but quickly move on to realising “something bigger is going on here”.  The LivingCampus then becomes a prompt for questions like “how did I get here today?”, “what is it I’m eating?” and “how do I make changes to my life?”.

Shane’s number of the week: 120 is the number of kakapo left.

Sam’s joined-up-thinking: How could we promote not-buying stuff?  Sam explores three options: trying to be impervious to marketing; removing all marketing; and recognising the value of marketing (full text here).