Smart farming for lazy city farmers ... lettuce, basil, green onions, varieties of mint, a watermelon, eggplant, and some Arabian greens like meloukhia.
Green Prophet is a very cool, fascinating website, beautifully designed and photographed, from a hot [in several senses of the word] part of the world, with a lot we can enjoy, delight in, and learn from. The site tabs across the top are ❃ Tech & Gadgets ❃ Transportation ❃ Business ❃ Health ❃ Travel ❃ Energy ❃ Cities ❃ Design ❃ Lifestyle ❃ and down the right margin we get slightly different content access to ❃ Green Design ❃ Clean Tech ❃ Sustainable Food ❃ Sustainable Transporation ❃ f/b likes ❃ Trending ❃ Most Read ❃
Collapsible woven refugee shelters powered by the sun
The content is courageous, uplifting, and fun as well as critical; but, searching in DK, I found no mention of Green Prophet in diary titles, text, or tags, and this terrific website that could really use our support. If you scroll about 3/4 down any page, you'll see only "14,079 people like it at Facebook to date — if you f/b, please make the number more. Meanwhile, enjoy the sampling that follows.
Alumna of Afghanistan’s Skateistan Skater School for Girls Not Allowed to Ride Bikes
A Greenhouse Water Collector in Ethiopia
The above photo is one of several pictured and detailed in
low-tech water conservation techniques. Another on water
warns that the arabian aquifer may be beyond repair.
One story at the
TECH & GADGETS is about the volunteerism of
Khaled Bashir, B.Sci. & M.Sci (Algeria; Univ of Pretoria, So.Africa; McGill Univ, Canada) who lives in Deir al Balah in the Gaza Strip and has been cooking with his own design of solar oven since 2000.
“My initial objective was clean energy ... that doesn’t cost anything. ...You can make everything in this oven, except tea and coffee. ...I fill [my cooking gas] tank only once a year [and] now is the time to tell people that [instead of dependence on] gas, electricity and fuel...waiting in long lines for a tank of cooking gas, they can rely on a source that’s available to everyone.”
So far, Bashir has overseen the building of about 20 solar ovens, mostly for his neighbors. ... He is an expert on sustainable energy using renewable resources [and] worked for the Palestinian Agriculture Ministry for many years. He now works for a company that manufactures construction materials, where he is oversees [concrete insulation]. He makes his solar ovens with a relative.
“I’m not doing this for profit,” he says. To build an oven, all one has to do is come to him, or call him to come and oversee the process. It takes about two days and costs about $150 dollars. The cost can be mitigated if recycled wood from unwanted furniture and glass from old mirrors are used.
“I want to see the young people of Gaza turn to alternative energy,” Bashir says. “My house is open, and I’m willing to share my knowledge.”
One of the articles at
CITIES, "
Galilee to Dead Sea: Jordan Valley’s first-ever regional master plan reports on the consortium of environmental groups for sustainable development in the Jordan Valley.
They announced [this first project of its kind on June 9 at a conference on the Jordanian shore] of the Dead Sea. The strategy is akin to a modern Marshall Plan; it aims to convert a toxic river and highly depressed economic area into an international model for river rehabilitation and regional stability.
The conference, under the patronage of Jordan Minister of Water Dr. Hazim al Nasser, marked the end of a European Union (SWIM) funded program and brought together government officials from Jordan, Palestine and Israel, diplomats, international develop- ment agencies, and river basin experts to discuss how best to move the program...to implementation. EcoPeace Middle East, together with partners at the Stockholm International Water Institute and Global Nature Fund, and lead consultant Royal HaskoningDHV, were instrumental in creating the planning document [which] echoes the findings of Mumbai-based think tank Strategic Foresight Group, who assert that [water is a means for peace among Israel, Jordan, and Palestine]:“any two countries engaged in active water cooperation, do not go to war for any reason whatsoever.”
Mayors from 114 north american cities join Jordan River project.
The scope of this site is breathtakingly beyond description. A July 2014 article discusses
ethical investing in the middle east. There's
Mesopotamian moon-god archaeology pre-dating Stonehenge, the
shrinking of the Aral sea in time lapse photography, the June 4 rooftop spoken-word-and-poetry
Eco-Slam with a link in it to the website of the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development [
ICSD at Wikipedia],
Palestinian rappers tackling MidEast sexism,
“I am the dishes, the ironing, I am everything, I am nothing. But remind me: Who are you?” So plays the hook of a new feminist anthem released by the Palestinian rappers, DAM. The video for “Who You Are” plays on sexist attitudes by having men and women switch domestic roles typical in the Middle East, but also familiar across most cultures.
Directed by Oscar-nominated Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti, the video is starting to rack up YouTube views. It has an associated social media campaign which asks fans to send videos of themselves challenging traditional gender roles. (See images.) The song release coincides with the first female singer joining the all-male trio, Maysa Daw, who told the Hebrew-language news site Local Call, “Men try to stereotype women all the time and I just want to ask which stereotypes define men.”
and Syrian ICARDA (Internat'l Ctr for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas) scientists saving from war
80 percent of the Aleppo seed bank—the world’s largest collection of barley, fava, lentil, ancient durum and bread wheat seeds, and wild crops collected thru'out the Fertile Crescent, including Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq—earning the Gregor Mendel Innovation Prize for outstanding
contributions to plant breeding:
Crisis is never one-dimensional. It’s more like an onion. Beneath the skin we discover distinct layers of need, often mutually exclusive despite a common cause. Each has merit, each warrants our attention, and each competes for limited human and cash resources. Stories like this – broadcasting the enormous positive impact of individual action – are bright points in regional darkness. Keep calm and carry on.
And there're recipes (more below the pickled lemons, and at the HEALTH tab, and the "Sustainable Food" box down the right margin), reports on contraception scams and population explosion increasing shortages of food and water, computer-printable cars, air
pollution lethality even indoors, pharmaceutical cannabis inhalers, edible coffee cups, organic West Bank mushroom farming, Tesla and SolarEdge collaborating on home-battery solar energy storage,
abandoned dog rescue in Istanbul,
1,500-year-old Egyptian
knitted baby booties,
bees-wax-&-black- tea home-made sunscreen, Irishwoman environmentalist and surfing champion
Easky Britton teaching Irani girls how to surf,
Nigerian school-girls' hydrogen-from-urine electricity generator invention,
perhaps related,
hyper-absorbent baby-diapers made from jellyfish that biodegrade in under 30 days, and perhaps related to
that,
jellyfish taking over the Med.
Film Solar Mamas Shows Sustainable Engineering by Bedouin Women (Review)
If you ever wondered how the coffee machine works or how your iPhone responds to touch, then littleBits are for you. Lebanese designer Ayah Bdeir won an additional $3.5 USD million in venture capital to scale up a hugely popular new line of toys that makes building electronic circuits as easy as fixing up cracks in Beirut’s buildings with LEGO bricks.
Woman Builds Off-Grid Earth Bag Home in Turkey for $3,761 has links to this kind of construction
Khas v'khalila, (all in all),
is a valuable and perhaps unequaled online resource. Let's enjoy and learn
all kinds of unexpected things from it, and give it our support.
So, what else is new (or newly found) at the Kitchen Table tonight?