Blog Action Day 2010 - Water: conceptual drops in the health career model

Today is Blog Action Day and the theme is water.

Below I have added a selection of water related links across the domains of the health career model:

Interpersonal : Sciences

Sociology : Political

Water use - You? Water Encyclopedia water in Philosophy National Geographic the Water project	Properties of water The water cycle Water, sanitation & health: WHO  Water on the Sun SI water Homeostasis
Water mythology WaterWired Water development photos Costing the Earth BBC: Cleaning Up the Ganges	Waternet: Geopolitics of water scarcity in the Middle East World Water Day Water, health and economics: WHO Water.org UNESCO

The above links:
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/beinggreen/117266.aspx
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/
http://www.science-parliament.eu/forums/2010-water-science-politics/1151/water-in-philosophy
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/04/water-is-life/kingsolver-text
http://thewaterproject.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Water/
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/news/sunwater.htmlhttp://www.simetric.co.uk/si_water.htm
http://www.nursingtimes.net/nursing-practice-clinical-research/homeostasis-part-4-fluid-balance/203260.article
http://www.lenntech.com/water-mythology.htm
http://aquadoc.typepad.com/waterwired/
http://www.photovault.com/Link/Food/Water/WellsDevelopment/FWWVolume01.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sg2my
http://www.waternet.be/
http://www.worldwaterday.org/
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/economic/
http://water.org/
http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/

Report: Open data, democracy and public sector reform

From: Tim Davies tim@practicalparticipation.co.uk
Date: Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 2:35 AM

Open data, democracy and public sector reform is a report based on a recent MSc dissertation taking a look at the policy and practice of using open government data from data.gov.uk. It's now up as an online document at -
http://practicalparticipation.co.uk/odi/report/

In looking at how open government data is being used in practice it draws out a number of themes, including:

Data is not just for developers
- there is a tendency to focus on machine-readable data for large scale visualisations and mash-ups; but data can be useful to individual citizens or local citizen activists, finding facts within spreadsheets and campaigning for change locally.

Open government data changes the gatekeepers, and the role of civic actors
- now mainstream media, independent citizens, companies and different levels of government are all afforded the possibility of advancing their own interpretations of data. Government, however, retains some (significant?) gate-keeping power by setting the categories and structure in which data is recorded and released. Debates over the meaning of data become more important - and the capacity of local democratic actors to be part of those debates again needs to be developed.

Open government data can support innovation in public services
- predominantly through improving the 'markets' for public service innovation - allowing social and commercial entrepreneurs to work with government data, and preventing exclusive access to data being an anti-competitive advantage for certain firms. However, the research didn't find cases where open government data was successfully facilitating 'citizen led' forms of public service innovation involving local communities discussing and debating how services operated.

A focus on digitizing government underlies much open government data supply and use, and can lead to concerns of politics, power and justice being under-valued in the development of open government data infrastructure
- and we need more articulation and focus on real-live civic use-cases of open government data to inform the development of open data infrastructures.

All comments and feedback on the report welcome - particularly to help shape thinking about what to do with the research next.

http://www.timdavies.org.uk
@timdavies

Co-director of Practical Participation:
http://www.practicalparticipation.co.uk

My source:
ciresearchers at vancouvercommunity.net

Were you born in 1989? Join the EU "Generation '89" project!

Are you a citizen of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania or the UK?

Meet people from your generation!
Join the "Generation '89" project!

You have the chance to participate in one of the simultaneous meetings in Brussels, Bucharest, Prague or Warsaw, and to present the Declaration "Generation '89" to EU representatives in Brussels!

Application deadline: 31 January 2010 (10 February for Belgium and Poland)

More info at www.generation89.eu

With the support of the "Citizenship" Programme of the European Union.

GENERATION 89

The project "Generation 89" proposes to commemorate the fall of the communist systems in the European countries, through the lens of the young people born in 1989. The young people from Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, Belgium, UK, Germany, Hungary, Austria and Bulgaria and have had different historical context in which they lived their lives, and one of the objectives of this project is to bring together these youngsters and to offer a space where they can share experiences and expectations for the future. In order to attain this objective, 4 international meetings will be organised in Prague, Bucharest, Warsaw, and Brussels, where for two days the participants will have a various programme focused on two themes: national past and European future.

The programme will comprise movie screenings and debates on the events from 1989, as their parents' generation lived and storied them, informational session regarding the EU policies in the matter of youth and young professionals, workshops focused in drafting a Declaration upon how they perceive their future in EU, a documentary visit to a local organisation with activity in the field of communist systems studies, sightseeing and international night. A second meeting in Brussels of a delegation of the young representatives will be organised with the EU representatives, in order to present the Declaration "Generation 89" and the young people opinion on the future of Europe and their future as citizens of EU. With the support of the "Citizenship" Programme of the European Union.

www.generation89.eu

Image source: Globe - Europe Registrarism

Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice

This is the website for the book Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice, edited by Todd Davies and Seeta Peña Gangadharan (CSLI Publications, November 2009).

All content on ODBook.Stanford.Edu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

My source: Community Informatics list.

Political shortsightedness and the power of nuclear weapons

The political expense debacle for ALL the main political parties* here in the UK and the consequences have numerously been described as 'fall-out'.

Although the lasting image is one of MPs staring into the headlights, there are many politicians who must be quietly pleased. When you listen to the leaders explain how the mess will be fixed, they appear to treat the expenses shinannighans as the problem that demands political reform. Once expenses are transparent and the public reassured then the problem is resolved and democracy will be strengthened.

As the political domain links at Hodges' model has attested for many years (and this resource merely scratches a personal political itch) politics covers rather more than 'expenses' and their governance. Long term calls for reform have included aspects of government and democracy beyond the clamour over the voting system. There is a need for global political reform and if this needs to start at a national level from the 'bottom' (literally in this case) -up then so be it. Ideally though political reform must happen in several quarters simultaneously. That is, socially, nationally and reform of the UN. This is happening and through the activism of various World Citizenry - Global Parliament initiatives that exist.

A meeting of minds is not enough: there is a need for a meeting of global consciousness. On a more mundane level - for Westminster the politicians and voters must wake up and grasp the opportunity for wider political reform.

A nuclear blast gives rise to much more than expense laden fall-out.

What about:

• Overpressure
• Electromagnetic pulse
• ....?

Just like clean-up and decommissioning in the nuclear industry, reform and cleaning up the bloat and detritus of political institutions is complex, labour intensive, time consuming, scary for some. Oh yes, and probably expensive too....

*And a shot across the bows for all the others!

Hodges' model: POLITICAL domain resources