My family arrived today from Anchorage. Over the next two weeks, we’re going to try to see a lot of Scotland, and maybe some of England too. American culture is not that far removed from British culture, but I expect we’ll focus a lot on the differences: Con-TRO-ver-sy versus CON-tro-ver-sy; biscuits and tea versus coffee and doughnuts; Toyota Yarises versus Toyota Tundras.
I’ve been here long enough that I don’t notice a lot of the differences any more. I don’t hear the accents of people I know well. Even better, I don’t hear my own, sticking out like a flat vowel. continue reading »
Social Innovation Camp is nigh, and I have yet to come up with a single suitable idea to submit. The trouble with most of my ideas is that they don’t require the internet. In fact, I’m having trouble thinking of anything that would benefit from a virtual implementation.
That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of socially innovative things to be done.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is a “Clean-Up Day.” It’s something I used to do in Anchorage. When the snow melts each spring, heaps of litter suddenly surfaces and the city looks like a dump. So every spring, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of volunteers scour the streets and parks, packing bright orange garbage bags full of rogue cigarette butts, plastic bottles and occasionally other, more novel rubbish (I once found a 2L bottle of K-Y Jelly in a marsh). continue reading »
