RESILIENT COMMUNITY: Forget Afghanistan, These are Needed in Detroit etc.

The US Military Special Operations Command is building eight "mobile factories" that fit into standard shipping containers.  These factories are based on the successful experience the US Army has had with something similar called the MPH.   From Strategypage:

The MPH was developed when the army realized that the easiest way to get the many rarely requested, but vital, replacement parts to the troops, was to manufacture the parts in the combat zone. In short order, this led to the construction of a portable parts fabrication system, called MPH, that fit into a standard 8x8x20 foot shipping container. The original version used two containers, but smaller equipment and more powerful computers eventually made it possible to use one container.

The key to making this work was the availability of computer controlled machine tools, which can take a block of the proper metal, and machine it into the desired part. The computer controlled machine tools have been around for decades, but the big breakthrough was the development of CAD (Computer Assisted Design) software for PCs in the 1980s, which made the process of designing, and then fabricating, a part much faster. The MPH has a high speed satellite data link, which enables it to obtain the CAD file for a part. Many CAD files are already stored in the MPH. Often, the MPH staff figure out a way to improve a part, based on the broken parts they see, and what the troops tell them.

In the last six years, MPHs have manufactured over 100,000 parts, on the spot. This saves days, or weeks, that it would take to order the part from the manufacturer, and the MPH part is usually a lot cheaper (because the air freight and manufacturer mark ups to pay for maintaining the part in inventory). The next version of the MPH has a 3-D part builder, which uses metal dust and a laser to build a part.

Hyperlocal manufacturing is real.  Think of it as one of the economic hearts of a thriving resilient community.  It's a revolution already in motion, as you can see in the rapid spread of hackerspaces.  Connect these hackerspaces, and the communities they serve, with networks that allow people to share, buy/sell, modify, customize, etc. designs for products/parts, and we are on our a way to a resilient decentralized economy that can survive the economic dislocation to come.

Add Fab Labs to the mix (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fab_lab) and you have the true beginnings of a local community that can make it's own things again.

Manufacturing is the next frontier of the "Distributed World" Food and Energy of course are also key parts.

A distributed world that can look after all its needs gives power back to the people - work - jobs and all that we need.

With local - food - energy - media and manufacturing - we also will create a local financial system as well.

We have all seen in our lifetime how a centralized world creates the opposite - structural unemployment - dependency and helplessness that sucks resources out of places and people.

One World Café cooks up a recipe for others to follow

August 6th, 2010 @ 6:12pm

By Jed Boal

SALT LAKE CITY -- A Café in Salt Lake has discovered there's a growing appetite for its altruistic approach to business. There's no set menu, you pay what you can and a national chain is even testing out the business model.

Eight years ago, One World Café opened up at 41 S. 300 East with a simple goal: feed hungry people in the community with good organic food. There was no cash register, and diners paid whatever they thought was fair.

Now, research shows that model works, and others are eager to learn the recipe.

One World Café

Where: 41 S. 300 East Salt Lake City
Hours: Monday - Saturday: 11 am - 10 pm
Sunday: 9 am - 5 pm
What: No menu, no prices. Customers pay what they want.
For more information click here.

 

KSL caught up with the lunch crowd at One World as they enjoyed the best balanced meal head chef Giovanni Bouderbala dreamed up Friday: salmon and crab cakes, organic stir-fry vegetables and vegan chocolate cake for dessert.

The restaurant now has a cash register and a board with suggested prices, but you still pay what you want, or you can work for a meal.

"In One World, we're all here in the same place," says Bouderbala. "We can help each other. Somebody else will drop a couple extra bucks for you. That's how it works."

Then you drop a couple of extra buck for them, when you can.

The original owner now consults businesses nationwide that are giving the concept a try. Panera Bakery, a national chain, now runs a pay-what-you-want store in St. Louis and plans to open two more.

So if our traditional way of life and economy is hitting the skis - where is the new one that might take its place?

I am looking at the really "Old Economy" and the really Old Culture that sustained us for millions of year - the tribal hunter gatherer society.

But I am not looking at it with the view of us living in caves but as people in the 14th century looked back at the Classic times at the advent of the Renaissance. Looking back at the truths, lessons and useful ideas that were forgotten and that could be used in new ways.

One of the ideas that made humans different from all apes other than Bonobos - who also like us love recreational and social sex - was the sharing of food. We are hard wired to share food.

Next to sex, sharing food is at the heart of human social interaction.

One World Cafe uses a business model based on this idea. I see it as a "Renaissance Idea" an old idea rooted in our deepest nature that was forgotten and can be revived because it works and it is suited to who we are.

Here is more on the idea:

But what relation obesity and diabetes have to the mental functioning of the developing brains of children and adolescents has been uncharted territory -- exactly where a scientist like Dr. Convit and his research team would want to go.

They began their work studying obese adolescents with type 2 diabetes. They wondered if serious weight gain and diabetes reduced intellectual performance in youth. To answer this critical question, they would test the brain's functioning by measuring intelligence, reading, spelling, vocabulary, reasoning, memory, attention, concentration and mental efficiency. They would also do imaging of the brain by MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a scanning technique where the brain can be safely studied) to see if there were reductions in its size or capacity to function, of course factoring in age, that might be related to lower levels of mental performance.

Their results show that the adolescents with type 2 diabetes did more poorly across the board on mental performance tests. In addition, these same youth showed smaller brain volume for the entire brain and the frontal lobes, where much of our reasoning occurs. The frontal lobes are the last part of the brain to mature, making it is highly sensitive to change during adolescence. The abnormal findings Dr. Convit found occur more in obese diabetic youth than in (matched) youth who also were obese but did not have diabetes (or pre-diabetes -- in which the body has developed insulin resistance).

Obesity in youth has tripled in the past 30 years, with one in three three high school students now overweight or obese in the United States. Minority groups show even more disturbing trends with one in two Hispanic and four in 10 black youths affected. Obesity is the road to insulin resistance and diabetes, with their well known adverse effects on blood vessels and the heart -- which shorten life and erode its quality along the way. What is new, however, is that obese, diabetic youth also have their brains impacted and appear to have difficulty learning and succeeding in school.

Education is not only about school. Health is not only about medicine. Our minds our bodies and our perspectives are all set by the experiences that we have when we are young.

It makes perfect sense to me to make healthy eating part of school. This is not juts a pipe dream. My daughter works for a very successful organization called Real Food for Real Kids in Toronto that does just that. It offers real food to kids in Daycare and Kindergarten.

In so doing it creates new habits for the kids and for their families. In so doing it is becoming a critically important driver for a new better local food system in Toronto.

There is no better investment in our future than in making the link between local food and schools.

This goes beyond providing better food and stimulating local food production. Giving kids the chance to grow food themselves is part of this. Re-introducing them to the reality and the miracle of food.

Even this has a model - the Edible School Yard.

What could be better?

It is easy to give up hope right now. But for all my Doom Saying - I am very optimistic.

This video will show you why. It is the basis of a book I am writing where I do my best to show that we as a species may be living through the stages of development that a person will.

It is our relationship with Food primarily that drives each stage - with help from our prevailing use of energy and our communication system.

My call is that we are ending our Narcissistic Teen Age and entering the New Parent Age where we Partner with Nature to create the best future of our children.

I was lucky and spoke second - what was amazing was that nearly every talk that followed - none had spoken to each other before - made the point of using Nature as our guide.

Aaron surprised us all by not talking about wind power, voltaics etc but going to the heart of a more sustainable house - PLACE. It is how you set a building up in a place and what you make it out of that has the most impact.

Our own house is set facing south with major wind breaks on the north and seasonal shade on the south. The Palmers did a fantastic job of locating the building in the best possible place.

In our next home we will go as far as we can to use the principles that Aaron talks about here - all are common sense and all will save you money.

David MacKay, who is co-ordinating the establishment of the new outdoor Queen Street Farmers Market set to open July 2, says in a news release the Queen Street Farmers Market will be one of seven markets operating on P.E.I. by early summer and as new markets open, more and more Island families are including them in their weekly shopping trip.

“For today’s food shoppers, where their food comes from is becoming an increasingly important aspect of the food-selection process,” MacKay said.

The new Queen Street Farmers Market addresses the concern and offers a number of additional positives, MacKay said in the news release. “The outdoor market on the south side of the Queen Street Food Co-operative will provide a great opportunity for city residents as well as tourists visiting the city to sample local food, meet the local farmers and take home fresh Island produce.“

The market will offer organic sausages, bread, ethnic foods, strawberries and variety of other fresh produce and products including freshly cut flowers and a selection of herbs and spices.

The market will be open 3-8 p.m. Friday evenings to accommodate people who work downtown and want to buy food on their way home. The Queen Street Farmers Market isn’t the only new market Islanders will see this summer.

The Downtown Farmers Market is set to open July 4 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays. The market will be located on lower Queen Street on the blocks between Richmond and Dorchester Streets and will operate in the parking spaces along the two blocks.

Downtown Charlottetown Inc. has set a goal of having at least 20 vendors take part in the market for 12 weeks, ending Sept. 19.

Dawn Alan, executive director of Downtown Charlottetown Inc., said the Downtown Farmers Market offers Islanders and visitors one more way to buy P.E.I. in the capital city. “A downtown farmers market will increase pedestrian traffic in the downtown, improve sales for nearby retailers and expand Sunday shopping options,” Alan said.

Vendors interested in learning more on space availability can contact Jason Lee at Spry Consulting at 626-7720.

It's coming!

For the first time ever, senior citizens will outnumber children by 2021, according to new population projections from Statistics Canada.

The estimates, released Wednesday, indicate the population of over-65s will more than double, from 4.7 million in 2009 to between 9.9 million and 10.9 million by 2036. Seniors will surpass children aged 14 and under between 2015 and 2021.

“The ageing of the population is projected to accelerate rapidly, as the entire baby boom generation turns 65 [by 2036],” Statscan said in a release.

Canada’s changing age structure will affect many aspects of society, from health care to pensions. Indeed, Statistics Canada said the ratio of working-age people to seniors would decrease from five to one in 2009 to about 2.5 to one by 2036.

The national statistics agency said seniors would account for between 23 per cent to 25 per cent of the overall population by 2036, nearly double the 13.9 per cent recorded in 2009. As well, the proportion of the population aged 15 to 64 – the traditional work force – would decline from about 70 per cent to 60 per cent.

Most of our children leave school with few social or work skills. They enter a society where there is little or no work for them. They are on track to remain dependent. Those that do leave school with social and work skills find too that there is little or no work for them. So they leave.

The looming crisis for PEI and for the Atlantic provinces that have the most skewed demographics is partly rooted in our education system but has deeper roots in the structure and nature of our economy.

PEI is like Greece. We have given up any part of a productive economy and offer only a Disney like tourism and the state.

We import all our food, our energy and goods. We export our wages, our taxes and our savings.

Add this demographic picture and we are bound to fail.

So what to do?

We have to create a real local economy that is rooted in local food and local energy. This creates real jobs for all. Creates real hope and aspiration that will itself change our education system. That will in turn shift most of our systems to local and real.

Food I think is the starting place. Here is where the work is and the capacity building that we will need to do other things. I see lots of good will and support here from all over the place. We are ready to try some experiments. School is a great place to start - school food - cooking - horticulture - community kitchens - parents. This will be fun and spark other things. All can be part of this.

Heating is another. A Biomass strategy is under way. This is a high employment high return idea. There is $200 millin on the table that we spend on oil to heat our homes. If we shift to heat all institutions this way, we will have built the capacity to do this for all. Schools are a great way to begin and two already are doing this.

School can be changed and we can be changed.

This is what the end of the oil age looks like. The cheap, easy petroleum is gone; from now on, we will pay steadily more and more for what we put in our gas tanks—more not just in dollars, but in lives and health, in a failed foreign policy that spawns foreign wars and military occupations, and in the lost integrity of the biological systems that sustain life on this planet.

The only solution is to do proactively, and sooner, what we will end up doing anyway as a result of resource depletion and economic, environmental, and military ruin: end our dependence on the stuff. Everybody knows we must do this. Even a recent American president (an oil man, it should be noted) admitted that “America is addicted to oil.” Will we let this addiction destroy us, or will we overcome it? Good intentions are not enough. Now is the moment for the President, other elected officials at all levels of government, and ordinary citizens to make this our central priority as a nation. We have hard choices to make, and an enormous amount of work to do.

Amen

Hospital food cooked with fresh local ingredients could put hundreds of millions of pounds back into the NHS, one hospital trust has said.

Catering managers at Nottingham City Hospital and the Queen's Medical Centre have switched to such a menu.

The trust says the daily plate saving is £2.50 per patient - that is more than £6m a year.

Trust catering manager John Hughes said up to £400m could be saved annually if it were rolled out across the NHS.

'Tough decisions'

The food travels less distance than many of the 7,000 patients who choose from the menu each day.

The hospital contract is also supporting dozens of local farmers and has saved a number from going under.

In its first year the farm-to-plate scheme has put a million pounds into the local economy and that is likely to double over the next 12 months.

Mr Hughes says the idea of getting his beef from down the road rather than South America sounded good but he thought it would be too expensive.

He was also concerned there would not be enough fresh local produce to fill his cupboards.

"I was happy to be proved wrong on both counts," he said. "This was one of the tough decisions I think we'd be cheered to the rafters for taking."

"It doesn't actually cost any more and you are actually going to invest in local communities and the local suppliers you want to develop. On top of that it's actually going to save the NHS millions of pounds a year."

My bet is that not only is this a money saver and a help to local food producers but also that the food served will be better for all in hospital too.

Can we not use our local institutions - schools and hospitals - as an anchor for a new local food system?

More Here:

Since 2003, the catering team at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust has been working to provide a sustainable food service as part of the Trust’s Good Corporate Citizenship initiative.

This includes more sustainable food procurement, working with community social enterprises to set up community cafes, and reducing the hospital kitchen’s carbon footprint.

The Trust also plans to introduce a biomass system to cook patients’ food, using locally grown biomass as fuel. This is expected to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill and reduce the catering system’s carbon footprint by up to 90%.

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust supports a number of other initiatives to promote sustainable activities and has been recognised for a number of its initiatives as the 2007 and 2008 winners of the Health Service Journal Awards for Corporate Citizenship.