...The transition model emboldens communities to look peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye and unleash the collective genius of their own people to find the answers to this big question: for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how are we going to:

    * significantly rebuild resilience (in response to peak oil)
    * drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change)?

Typically, self-determined solutions will involve some flavour of relocalisation. -- We're building a range of materials, training courses, events, tools & techniques, resources and a general support capability to help these communities. ... We're hoping that through this work, communities across the UK will unleash their own collective genius and embark on an imaginative and practical range of connected initiatives, leading to a way of life that is more resilient, more fulfilling and more equitable, and that has dramatically lower levels of carbon emissions. ...   more »

Trees play an important part in regulating pollution and climate in towns and cities, but are falling foul of insurance companies and councils who are felling healthy, mature trees in their thousands. An unusual contest is taking shape during the London mayoral campaign: candidates are fighting to see who can promise to plant the most trees. Boris Johnson has pledged to put up 10,000 street trees in London while Ken Livingstone has described the Conservative candidate's target as "incredibly unambitious" and claimed he will plant 600,000 trees by 2012. All the time, however, trees are being removed from the capital, and in other cities across the country, because of health and safety issues, security fears and, most commonly, insurance claims and threats from loss adjusters.…   more »

Thanks to Ashok Hindocha for sending me the following details of a historically significant function that was held on 12 December 2007, at 49 St Stephen’s Avenue London W12. During the function English Heritage Blue Plaque for Sri Aurobindo was unveiled by Monnou Bhandari. ...   more »

As I stand on the bridge, looking at the boats, I wonder if Sri Aurobindo went boating on the river Cam. Who knows? But surely he must have spent some time on her banks to reflect on her beauty. Even today when the river is full of boats packed with tourists, there is still an atmosphere of serenity. One can hear the sounds of nature and feel the freshness of the open air. All that this river has seen! She has been there, quietly flowing past this temple of knowledge, for several centuries now. How many great minds from King’s College must have sat on her banks and meditated or sat in boats and glided down her dark waters…

I have a good look at the Greek and Latin section after which the assistant takes me to the section where they preserve the question-papers of over a hundred years. There I see the examination paper that Sri Aurobindo had to answer in 1892. There are passages from Greek poetry and prose to be translated into English and again short passages in Latin prose and poetry to be translated into English. Then there is the exercise in reverse, that is, translations from English passages into Greek and Latin. The last exercise is an essay to be composed in English, imagining a typical day in the life of a character in Latin literature, a normal day in ancient Rome…

These two years at Cambridge were linked to all the three aspects of Sri Aurobindo’s personality: the poet, the patriot and the philosopher. His first collection of poems was published from Baroda but actually these poems had been written in Cambridge. His first contact with the Freedom Movement came when he joined the Indian Majlis and became its secretary. His writings in Pondicherry on philosophical subjects have the stamp and the style of a scholar. Perhaps it is his high style that has kept the common man from understanding him. But, on the other hand, can we expect less from someone who was a first class scholar from Cambridge?

As we were thanking the librarian for having allowed us to see the many valuable documents, he remarked that there aren’t very many young people who take up the Classical Tripos these days, even though the course has been slightly modified to adapt to the needs of our modern times. It is important to note that at the end of the 19th century studying the classics was a normal thing for people of the upper class to do. It wasn’t until relatively recently that people started to choose a line of study according to what they were planning to take up as a profession in life. In those days higher studies were meant more for training the mind to think rather than to acquire a job skill…   more »

The leading voices in science studies have argued that modern science reflects dominant social interests of Western society. Following this logic, postmodern scholars have urged postcolonial societies to develop their own "alternative sciences" as a step towards "mental decolonization". These ideas have found a warm welcome among Hindu nationalists who came to power in India in the early 1990s. In this passionate and highly original study, Indian-born author Meera Nanda reveals how these well-meaning but ultimately misguided ideas are enabling Hindu ideologues to propagate religious myths in the guise of science and secularism.

At the heart of Hindu supremacist ideology, Nanda argues, lies a postmodernist assumption: that each society has its own norms of reasonableness, logic, rules of evidence, and conception of truth, and that there is no non-arbitrary, culture-independent way to choose among these alternatives. What is being celebrated as "difference" by postmodernists, however, has more often than not been the source of mental bondage and authoritarianism in non-Western cultures. The "Vedic sciences" currently endorsed in Indian schools, colleges, and the mass media promotes the same elements of orthodox Hinduism that have for centuries deprived the vast majority of Indian people of their full humanity.

By denouncing science and secularization, the left was unwittingly contributing to what Nanda calls "reactionary modernism." ...   more »

The world - especially the Western United States, the Mediterranean region and Brazil - will likely suffer more extended droughts, heavy rainfalls and longer heat waves over the next century because of global warming, a new study forecasts. -- But the prediction of a future of nasty extreme weather also includes fewer freezes and a longer growing season. ...   more »

In November 2005, Fritz Stern received an award for his life’s work on Germans, Jews and the roots of National Socialism, presented to him by Joschka Fischer, then the German foreign minister. With a frankness that startled some in the audience, Stern, an emeritus professor of European history at Columbia University, peppered his acceptance speech with the similarities he saw between the path taken by Germany in the years leading up to Hitler and the path being taken by the United States today. He talked about a group of 1920’s intellectuals known as the “conservative revolutionaries,” who “denounced liberalism as the greatest, most invidious threat, and attacked it for its tolerance, rationality and cosmopolitan culture,” and about how Hitler had used religion to appeal to the German public. In Hitler’s first radio address after becoming chancellor, Stern noted, he declared that the Nazis regarded “Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.” ...   more »

From an early age, my parents instilled in me, a desire to explore and learn first hand, about the world around me. Our family vacations and weekend excursions were general education courses disguised as fun. Knowingly or unknowingly they set me on course for a journey that today, I feel, is still just beginning.

The ongoing quest to document the world's people and the global events that shape our common humanity, has for me, been instrumental in breaking down stereotypes, preconceptions and prejudices. I believe that the more of the world we see and experience, the more we understand. It seems, people everywhere, share similar goals, aspirations, hopes and desires.

It is with a strong sense of obligation that I share, through photographs, the people, places and events that have profoundly shaped my vision of our world. By sharing these experiences with you, I hope to make a small, positive contribution to a heightened sense of world community.

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -Gandhi-    more »

ARTI is an NGO based in Maharashtra, founded by a group of scientists and social workers in 1996. The mission of the organisation is to serve as an instrument of sustainable rural development through the application of scientific and technological knowledge.

ARTI undertakes research to study, develop, standardise, implement, commercialise and popularise innovative appropriate rural technologies with special emphasis on making traditional rural businesses more profitable and also on generating novel employment opportunities in rural areas. We have now nearly 25 standardised and field-tested technologies to offer to rural entrepreneurs through our Rural Entrepreneurship Development Centre (REDC). Our sphere of activities is no longer restricted to Maharashtra, but has spread to other states including Goa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pardesh, Sikkim, Tripura and Kerala. Some of our technologies are also being tried out in other developing countries in Asia and Africa. ...   more »