Water With Words

Japan exactly one year ago was effected by a massive 8.9 earthquake also causing a devastating tsunami.

Shelterbox returns to document how things are and how they still need help.

Maricn Jakubowski’s prime motivation is to create a new system that would bring the cost of living for everyone down to zero, stating the the average American’s cost of living is $1 million throughout their lives.  Marcin conveyed that goal through a Global Village Construction Set (GVCS).  His credentials are a B.A. in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Physics.  In his final year for his Ph.D. he came up with Open Source Ecology, an idea where anyone can build a community on only local resources. 

Open Source Ecology is a movement dedicated to the collaborative development of tools for replicable, open source, modern off-grid “resilient communities.” By using permaculture and digitalfabrication together to provide for basic needs and open source methodology to allow low cost replication of the entire operation. 

You can follow what they are doing at opensourceecology.org where they frequently give updates on how the GVCS is coming along.

You can also become a True Fan and support this project.

Make Your Own Energy

This video is from Permacyclists.com. There mission is to go over land from New York to Rio for the Rio 2012 Earth Summit coming up this June. On the way down they stop and film various socio-environmental organizations. 

This particular video explains a certain Org that deals with water as an energy source demonstrating that if you channel it correctly you can actually utilize the potential energy around you.  I don’t agree with how they say “own” energy because it is not ours, it’s the Earth’s which is something greater than what we are. 

Down below I put the description of what they put for the video.

Check it out

There are people who are just born do get there hands dirty. They are do-ers, they see a problem and they look for a solution. If a solution already exists, they make it better – if there isn’t one yet, they invent a new one. This is what it’s like at Alterna. The office is a bee-hive of activity, with tools piled on tables and machines in various states of disrepair lying around the office. When we visited, they were converting their workshop into a production plant for efficient cookstoves, and we had to struggle to get the filming done during the few moments someone wasn’t sawing or hammering or just banging around trying out something new.

DROPS in collaboration with WaterAid

Hey everyone,  I know I have been out of the game for a while but I saw this video and felt it should be shared because it is such a neat a idea.

It is an interactive game where the person playing  is controls a drop of water and must extract every drop of water from the surrounding area in order to enhance the river. 

I serve as a mentor for the community in which I live in and deal with everyday American teenage boys.  The majority of these youth have trouble socially and I mostly credit that to the escape they find in video games that are promoted in pop culture (i.e. Call of Duty).  The problem with this is they do not gain anything from this.  With DROPS it supplies a subconscious educational component and helps with understanding the water cycle in a simple yet motivating way to help conserve clean water. 

WaterAid.org

Spring of Sorrow is a short film heavily focused on the issue of water shortage.  The main character, Lily, is a young girl that has an older sister that has fallen ill which encourages her to embark on an imaginative journey to find the mythical Spring of Sorrow.  The film begins on a sad note but rapidly creates an atmosphere of hope through the effects of wind, beautiful scenery, and uplifting music.  It touches several themes throughout the film relating water with one being the scene where she arrives at a petting zoo observing several animals until she comes across a rabbit. The rabbit is not of interest but the water that is being fed to it is.  This is a form of desperation found in many humans and draws a very important question, which has priority in regards to water usage?  Animals or humans? There are many zoos in the world where animals are supposed to have water in order to look healthy for the entertainment of humans while at the same time there are billions of humans in parts of the world that do not have a reliable, clean water source they can depend on.  It seemed to have been perceived as a selfish act but as another species on the planet Earth, humans also have basic survival necessities as well.  Something that I liked about this film is that it demonstrates that water is needed by the animals, humans, and plants.  It is the basic unit of life.  When the florist shows Lily that water produces fruit, it opened up a whole new aspect of water usage that she did not think of to help her sister.  

            It is interesting that the film does not mention anything about money and puts water as the most valuable object.  Also, as traveling nomads I would think they would know their surroundings and have knowledge that they should set up camp need a lake or somewhere in close proximity of a freshwater source.  Well, that is neither here nor there because they were obviously dependent on rain the whole time. What also bothered me was if they set up camp in the desert, then that makes them vulnerable to flash floods when it rains. In despite of the fallacies within the film, Spring of Sorrow does bring hope to the audience and addresses multiple issues of water shortage.  I would give it 4 stars out of 5.  This could have been improved through some small corrections but is appropriate for the topic at hand.

Water Changes Everything.

This video was made by the non-profit charity:water.

charity: water is a non-profit bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

This goes to show that we can end the water crisis in our lifetime. But first we have to let everyone know it’s happening. Learn how water changes everything — and share this with everyone you know.

This is a trailer to a video I will later post. It expresses the concern over the agricultural crisis that awaits the tropics. 

They mention the CGIAR, which is an acronym for Consultive Group on International Agricultural Research. They’re pretty much a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for sustainable development.

Life in Haiti.

This mysterious continent is captured beautifully in this video.

Pale Blue Dot

This video shouldn’t make you feel small. Instead, it should make you feel unique.