Simpsons endorse off-grid lifestyle

Fox continues to dribble out info about the upcoming, record-setting 500th Simpsons episode, in which Homer and family go to live off the grid.

What will Mr Burns think?

We already covered the basic news that the family are ejected from Springfield and find a warm welcome in an off-grid community.

Now it transpires that the episode will also include an appearance by Julian Assange, the autocratic Wikileaks founder, who is living with the off-gridders when The Simpsons arrive.

“The Simpsons go off the grid to this very rugged place where they meet [Assange], who’s sort of their new Flanders,” said Al Jean, executive producer of the show.

However, aside from being their new next door neighbour, the similarities between Flanders and Assange end there. When the Simpsons are invited to watch a home movie with Assange they find themselves watching an Afghan wedding being bombed.

Its not the first time Homer and family have toyed with the off-grid life. In an environmentally-themed episode aired Sunday, April 25th 2010, Homer tried out wind energy, and built a backyard turbine.

But when Homer realizes some of the power is being directed to the local electric company, he decides to remove his home from the grid and becomes completely dependent upon his  unreliable source of power. “From now on, the Simpsons are living intermittently,” he declares.

We’ve known for a while that the milestone 500th episode of “The Simpsons” would come somewhere early in 2012, but FOX has now nailed down a date for the episode: Sunday, Feb. 19.

There's no Remembrancer here, dear

The gloves are off in the 100-day standoff between the City of London Corporation and London Occupy protesters.

Occupy organisers plan to take over more buildings in the next few weeks, as the movement focuses public attention on finance industry billionaires. This evening it offered to vacate squatted buildings in return for concessions from City grandees on the transparency of their fundraising and lobbying operations.

After eviction orders were handed out to the St Paul’s and Bank of Ideas squatters by the High Court last week, the Occupy movement took a new building last morning, in the Barbican area of the City of London, and organisers expect to move into other addresses over the next few days.

But hours later the occupiers left the building after owners cited safety concerns. It is thought Occupy legal advisers considered the presence of Asbestos in the building would give the owners carte blanche to clear the Occupation before it had taken root.

In the few hours when the building was occupied, protesters garnered international publicity for their offer to leave the building only if the City Corporation (ultimate owners of the Square Mile) had agreed to open up its books to pubic scrutiny. Occupy supporters are worried that billions is being spent lobbying on behalf of the banks and other financial institutions. They point out that there is a little-know title in the Houses of Parliament called The Remembrancer, whose job is to warn the City Corporation of any legislation that might affect the interests of the denizens of the City of London. Is own web site says: “As the City’s head of protocol, the Remembrancer’s Office is responsible for organising events and hospitality on behalf of the City Corporation. Functions range from small receptions to major State banquets.”

The Remembrancer has an official location, out of sight behind the Speakers chair in the House of Commons, where he (always a he)  can see and hear everything but not be seen or heard. Little John has raised no objection to this tradition.
- ends -

Please send all news about Occupy to nick@off-grid.net

Makers respond to growing interest in off-grid lifestyle

We’ve known for a while that the milestone 500th episode of “The Simpsons” would come somewhere early in 2012, but FOX has now nailed down a date for the episode: Sunday, Feb. 19.

The episode is called “At Long Last Leave,” and  scant details have been released by makers Fox.  We only know the episode involves the Simpsons being evicted from Springfield and taking up residence with an off the grid community outside town. When Homer and family try to return home they are treated so badly they come to respect the warm welcome they received from the off-gridders.

Its not the first time Homer and family have toyed with the off-grid life. In an environmentally-themed episode aired Sunday, April 25th 2010, Homer tried out wind energy, and built a backyard turbine.

But when Homer realizes some of the power is being directed to the local electric company, he decides to remove his home from the grid and becomes completely dependent upon his  unreliable source of power. “From now on, the Simpsons are living intermittently,” he declares.

PLEASE send us any video footage, whether its shot on a phone or a camcorder or a film camera.  Its really easy,so there will be no hassle with snail-mailing a DVD or fiddling with YouSendIt.  We have our own uploader that sends the footage to our YouTube channel.

Curry - approves of thrift store aesthetic

How to live well on $20,000 a year?  Go off the grid said the Today show at 8.10am.

Its peak time for the Breakfast show, and yesterday they used it to announce what host Anne Curry called “the new American dream, and it’s not about buying a big house…..its about comfortably living on less. And for some, even leaving your things behind to pursue your passion.”

The couple interviewed on the slot live off  the grid in Maine. ”Theirs is a life of living without. No heat, savings, life insurance, trips to the mall or cable TV, though they do have state-provided health insurance. And when things break, Michael fixes them. Jennifer repurposes everything….”

As Jennifer puts it: “It’s far from perfect, but it suits us. And not being tied down to money just allows us to appreciate the very simple things in life, which are each other, the environment around us, and just doing what we love. Money isn’t everything.”

The second half of the Today slot is an interview with Jeff Yeager, a self-professed cheapskate who wrote the”The Cheapskate Next Door.” His main message is that “you must figure out what’s really important in your life and skip the rest. It’s also a way to really understand the relationship between happiness and what’s important.    These people are living debt-free. It’s a simple as this: If you can’t afford to pay for it now, you can’t afford it.

So how do you live debt-free?  By never paying the full price of course.

Mr. YEAGER: Lots of people like Jennifer and Michael are buying things used. We all know that a car depreciates 20 percent when you drive it off a lot. But also clothing. You can buy it at the thrift store, 10 cents on the dollar. I’m wearing entirely thrift store clothing this morning. It’s not Matt Lauer-ish, but it’s fashionable enough.

CURRY: It looks nice, actually. I like these cord–I think Matt would like those cords.”

Ready for anything

The London Occupation has just decided to invest in solar panels, to guarantee themselves at least a few kilowatt hours of electricity a day.  Two large panels and a battery are all they need to keep a laptop powered indefinitely.

Across the world, tent cities have sprung up in downtown centers.  They do not just happen, but require hours of daily planning.  Skilled chefs, IT consultants, lawyers, Bushcraft experts and others have kept the show on the road.

At St Paul’s in London, just a couple of miles from the Off-Grid.net office, the occupierts avoided opening a bank account for the first few weeks, for obvious reasons.  Eventually the pragmatists won, and the campers now share an account with the London Camp for Climate Action and had £7,300 of funds the last time they checked.

The rest of their money – “a few hundred quid”, according to one volunteer – is held in cash on site and is used to fund small purchases of spices for meals or gaffer tape.

Spending more than £150 has to win unanimous support at the general assembly; yesterday they signed off on £560 for solar panels.

The camp relies on donations for the majority of its essentials. An online wishlist specifies the things they need – gloves, woolly hats, scarves, Butane gas cans and a “Power Gorilla portable laptop charger” are all currently required. Last week a piano tuner was summoned and multiple candidates rose nobly to the challenge.

Thirty-six voluntary “working groups”, ranging from catering to meditation, run the camp and cater to its increasingly diverse needs, with daily meetings and an impressive array of rotas propped against the central information tent.

Mismanagement? Chaos? They’re leaving that to the bankers, they say.

50
People volunteered to work in the welfare tent to help the vulnerable

224
Tents have been counted on the site, including work tents like the kitchen, university, welfare and first aid centres

15
Litres of handwash donated by a company in the North

36
Working groups are listed in the information tent, including Occupy FC, direction action, artistic collective, healing, queer group, Egypt solidarity, meditation

1, 500
Hot vegan meals are prepared and served each day,
with an estimated 2,500 visits for snacks. Carnivores are appeased by tinned sardines and tuna

8
Protesters staff the kitchen, led by award-winning Italian chef Alessandro Petruzzi

100
Litres of milk donated each day, most of which is soya

50
Kilos of green beans donated on Monday for the evening meal

200
Containers of mixed veg donated by a member of the public

£5,000
Value of kitchen equipment donated to the food tent

10
Kilos of quick noodles donated in one delivery

£90
Daily cost of gas for the kitchen

2
Bin-liners of French bread donated daily by Paul’s bakery

8
Hours of daily lectures in the camp’s Tent City University, which has a capacity of 40

30
Children who organised an “occupy half-term” of music, dancing and a school assembly

£750
Cash donated into the camp’s main kitty each day

£7,300
Balance in the bank account the protesters are sharing

£20,000
The weekly fall in sales experienced by Pret A Manger on Paternoster Square since the protest began

5
Portaloos have been lent. The camp pays £180 a day for cleaning

0
Number of alcoholic drinks allowed on the site. The kitchen declines donations of wine and other tipples in accordance with the camp’s “No drink, no drugs” policy, although a few cans of Boddingtons have been sighted by visitors

The protest’s newspaper is the Occupied Times and 4,000 copies have been printed. Forty people write for it, and it has two designers and three commissioning editors

400
protesters during the day, with about 200 sleeping in the camp at night

1
“Banksy” Monopoly board

200
Books donated by one member of the public to the Tent City library, which now has more than 500. Other book donors include Freedom Press, the 125-year-old anarchist publisher in Whitechapel. The online wish list requests “political theory, other political, good fiction”

25
Number of volunteer press officers

5
Types of recycling bin, for plastic, paper and card, cans, glass bottles and food waste

Opting out is the best choice for many

As the Euro bail-out moves closer,  chances of a global economic collapse are receding.  American growth has today been rerated at 2.5% – nothing compared to China’s 9% but quite respectable considering the state of the economy.
The Euro rescue package being put in place is an enormous victory for the top 1%, and will allow the richest to continue to accumulate wealth on a grand scale.  Do not expect fighting in the streets,  because most people who currently have jobs and own houses will keep both.  Yes there will be mass protests at public spending cuts and there will be a VERY large minority who will be foreclosed, fired or both.
Almost every ordinary working American and European will feel the threat of redundancy, of not being able to meet mortgage or health insurance payments. In America there will be little in the way of a welfare net for these unlucky ones, especially the middle aged,  once they have had their two years of benefits.
So the need to have an off-grid plan is increasingly obvious to growing numbers of people who see they are moving backwards. They also see that others are advancing thanks to what they perceive as tricks, special privileges and corner-cutting. This is not about hopes sparked by others doing well, but about the collective rage at an elite doing obscenely well while the rest backslides.
Over a century ago Alexis De Tocqueville wrote that Americans’ higher tolerance for inequality relative to Europe’s was the result of more social mobility in the US.This is over; at least for now. The long, peaceful coexistence with income and wealth inequality is ending. Americans are now infuriated by the fact that chief executives at some of the nation’s largest companies earned around 340 times more than a typical American worker.While the numbers are unnerving and US income disparities are growing even more unequal, this is not new. What is new is the intolerance towards the hoarding by the “few” of unfathomable wealth, and also towards their profiting even in the midst of the crisis. The rich are seen to be either benefiting from bail-outs and other stimulus measures, or to be immune to the fiscal austerity that governments in many countries have had to adopt to stabilise their economies.We know we have entered new political territory when Mitt Romney, the leading contender for the Republican party presidential nomination, who initially called the Occupy Wall Street movement “dangerous”, is quoted as saying: “I look at what’s happening on Wall Street and my own view is, boy I understand how those people feel …The people in this country are upset.”

Great blog in the New York Times says OWS is a new form of political disobedience – refusing to obey the basic rules of political discourse, that there must be policy demands, leaders etc.

The author BERNARD E. HARCOURT, a professor of law at Chicago says that the New Politics is “a continuous choice between kinds of regulation and how they distribute wealth in society….what is required is constant vigilance of all the micro and macro rules that permeate our markets, our contracts, our tax codes, our banking regulations, our property laws — in sum, all the ordinary, often mundane, but frequently invisible forms of laws and regulations that are required to organize and maintain a colossal economy in the 21st-century and that constantly distribute wealth and resources.”

I agree – and that is why I hope the OWS movement will unite around one slogan – “PAY IT BACK” — its a hopelessly radical demand to redistribute wealth away from the 1% which has seized all it can for the past decade. It will never happen, say critics.

But we can make it happen, by ignoring politics as usual and simply demanding that it happen

WT6500- Gamechanger

Good news for homeowners and other small users who have a lot of wind in their area but have not trusted wind technology until now.  Honeywell have launched a $5000 turbine that is far more effective than any other known technology and pulls a decent current from winds as mild as just TWO miles per hour. (Buy it here)

Individual wind power have never caught the mass market, because small turbines are noisy, inefficient, require maintenance and break down a lot. Most small turbines need strong winds to turn a heavy central generator which creates current — the generator is positioned at the blades’ center, which moves at one tenth the speed of the periphery. And less speed translates to less power.

Honeywell’s wheel-shaped WT6500 takes an entirely new approach.

Magnets mounted near the tips of its 20 blades sweep through an outer ring of copper coils to produce a current, making the entire wheel the generator. Because this arrangement traps energy from the fast-moving blade tips and eliminates the heavy central generator, the WT6500 can pull a current from winds as slow as two miles an hour (most home turbines need 8mph gusts). Better suited to home use than other turbine designs, the wheel is six feet in diameter, whisper-quiet, and can produce up to 1,500 kilowatt-hours of power per year—enough to replace about 15 percent of an average household’s energy bill. Depending on an area’s clean-energy incentives, the turbine can pay for itself in only a couple of years, though most owners will make back their investment in five to 10.

(Buy it here)

HOW IT WORKS – FROM POPULAR SCIENCE MAGAZINE

• A flap on either side of the wheel catches wind, which spins the turbine toward the gusts.
• The wind moves the turbine wheel, including its 20 blades.
• The blade tips contain rare-earth metal magnets. As they sweep through copper coils in the outer frame, they generate a DC current.
• An inverter [not shown] gathers the current. It can store the power in a battery or convert it to AC for immediate use.

Looks like the Chinese Rare Earth monopoly just got another boost!

(Buy it here)

Plenty more where that came from...

The reasons for four days of London riots last week are beginning to emerge.  And they apply equally to every big city in America.

Although the London rioters were dismissed as alienated youth with no political message – intent on taking what was not theirs, the talk has also dwelt on two other things: gang membership that many of the looters apparently enjoy, and the sense of hopelessness felt by many of the alienated and unemployed kids who took to the streets.

But amidst all the talk of a sense of belonging, and a surrogate family provided by the gangs, nobody has yet mentioned the economic impulse of the street gangs – the thing that makes them a real social menace – the drug trade.  I am not talking about legal drugs here of course, the Prozac and other anti-depressants that are prescribed for up to 10% of the population.  In the event of a real social breakdown, I wonder what would happen on the streets once that section of society ran out of supplies?

No, I am talking about the illegal drug trade – the massive unspoken blight on every single neighbourhood in every single city inside the so-called Free World. The media seem to have overlooked the fact that the riots were sparked by the police shooting of a small-time drug dealer, Mark Duggan.  The locals who rose up in his support presumably knew he was a drug dealer. Perhaps that is why they liked him.

It is like, as a society, we have just taken the decision to hand billions of dollars every month to organised crime – a sort of finance scheme for our own social destruction. Of course you could say the same thing about the banking community.  We hand them billions of dollars every month, which they distribute to themselves in the form of bonuses.  And the rioters are well aware of this.  But because of their vast armies of lawyers, accountants, lobbyists and PR men, no government has dared to take the bankers on.

The drug dealers, however, do not have lobbyists or PR men.  When George Bush announced the war on drugs a decade or so ago, I felt sure it would fail, that the only long-term solution was complete legalisation, and state control of the trade in cannabis, cocaine, amphetamines and opiates.  But perhaps it was worth one last try to see whether we could eradicate the drug cartels.

Now we have had that try, and the war on drugs has to be declared a failure.  It has embroiled the West in expensive wars, like Afghanistan and  costly operations across Latin America and Mexico.  It has tied up our police forces and filled our prisons , but the trade goes on.  Surely now is the time to accept failure.

Now there is talk of “decriminalising” drugs, but that would be even worse than keeping them illegal.  Decriminalisation means stigmatising the dealer of drugs but not the user – but this would simply create a vast army of new users for the drug gangs to feed off.

No, the only possible solution is complete legalisation of all drugs for those over 18, under strict government control.

Never have we needed the revenue so badly that would be generated by legalising drugs and taxing them. Never have we needed so badly to reduce crime and free up police resources.  Not to mention curbing the vast amounts of cash sloshing around the drugs economy – the unpaid tax, the misery and exploitation and the training of our urban youth into a life of crime and violence.

This is even more true in gun-toting America than it is in the UK, where I live.

My block in London was not hit up. The looters passed by a few yards away, but there was nothing for them – no fashion stores, fancy cars, food or electronics.

But they will be back – in my area and in many others around the world, as Western economies teeter on the brink of the double dip.

No wonder living off the grid looks ever more inviting. Soon , there may be no other choice available.

Unlimited users but limited data

From this month new Verizon Wireless customers kissed goodbye to unlimited data plans. But what effect does this have on existing customers? Can off-grid people live without unlimited data?
Verizon planned to eliminate the unlimited data plan for months. But how much data do most people really need?

Neilsen recently published data that shows that the average Android user in the first quarter of 2011 used 582MB of data per month. The average iPhone user was close behind, using 492MB of data per month. This is about a quarter of the 2GB of data allotment per month that is offered under current usage-based plans. However off-grid users tend to have heavier traffic.What might concern off-grid users is that Nielsen also found that people are rapidly ramping up how much data they use. In the past 12 months, average data usage has grown by 89 percent in a year. In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone customers on average consumed 230MB of data. Twelve months later, they were using on average 435MB in the first quarter of 2011.Data consumption grew even faster for the heaviest data users. Nielsen found that data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users, or the 90th percentile, is up 109 percent. And the top 1 percent, or the 99th percentile, has grown their usage by 155 percent from 1.8GB in the first quarter of 2010 to over 4.6GB in the second quarter of 2011.But before you panic and try to future-proof your data plan, take a deep breath and keep a couple of things in mind.First, people who rack up more than 2GB of data per month are typically people who stream a lot of music or video. For example, according to Verizon’s data calculator, if you stream music for 1 hour a day every day of the month, you’ll hit the 2GB threshold. If you watch 1 hour of high-resolution video every day on your phone, you will rack up over 10GB of data per month. Even 30 minutes of high-resolution video every day will take your usage to about 5GB per month. And 2 minutes of low-resolution video every day of the month will get you to the 2GB limit pretty quickly. By contrast, watching 30 minutes a day of low-resolution video will eat up about 690MB of data per month.

One current Verizon customer we heard of has a data plan for a Windows 6.5 phone HTC Touch Pro2. She is hoping to wait for the new iPhone 5.
Verizon now offer three tiers of service: 2GB of data per month for $30 a month, 5GB of data for $50 per month, and a 10GB of data for $80 per month.If you already have an unlimited data plan with Verizon Wireless, and you are still under contract, then you will keep that unlimited data plan at least until the end of your contract. The newly priced plans will apply to new subscribers.
According to a document from Verizon leaked to the blog Android Central and others, Verizon has told its sales staff that it is “grandfathering” in existing Verizon customers. This means that if you already have an unlimited smartphone contract with Verizon, you will be able to keep that unlimited plan even if you upgrade or renew your contract after July 7.

But if you add another smartphone to your family plan, that new line will not get the unlimited data plan.If you already have a Verizon Wireless smartphone, you should be set when the next iPhone is introduced. You will likely get to keep your unlimited data plan, so you don’t need to do anything right now.
A year after AT&T introduced tiered pricing, the carrier is still allowing customers to keep the plan when they upgrade to a new smartphone, so long as they don’t change their plans.

Something that people should keep in mind is that Verizon or any other wireless carrier cannot change the terms of your contract, such as pricing, while you are still under contract. After all, it’s a contract. The company has agreed to offer you certain services at a certain price for a specific time period. And you have agreed to pay for those services at a particular price for a specified period of time. Either party is not allowed to break the contract. If you bail on Verizon, they charge you an early termination fee. And if they significantly change the terms of your contract, you can get out of it without being penalized.

But once your contract ends, all bets are off. Verizon may decide a year from now that it doesn’t want to allow people upgrading or renewing contracts to keep the unlimited data service. And they are well within their rights to do this. In fact, the company has recently changed its early upgrade policy and it’s also lengthened all its contracts to two years instead of one.

One other thing to keep in mind is that even if you no longer have access to the unlimited data plan, it doesn’t mean that you will necessarily be paying more for your data service. Most people use far less than the 2GB of data that is offered as part of either AT&T’s or Verizon’s plans.

Here’s a little guide put together by Verizon to give you an idea of how much data certain activities eat up: Email (text only) = 10KB Typical Web Page Lookup* = 1.5MB Audio Streaming = 40MB/hr Lo-Res Video Streaming = 200MB/hr Hi-Res Video Streaming = 400MB/hr Digital Photo download/upload (Hi-Res) = 1MB 
* Can exceed 2 MB with graphically intense pages or with video.Keep in mind, not many people watch that much video on their phones every day.

If you are a commuter and you like to watch Netflix on your phone on the train in the morning and evening, you might. Or if you throw your smartphone in the back of the minivan on a regular basis to entertain the kids while you cart them around, this could be a problem. If you’re one of those people then an unlimited plan is definitely the right plan for you.But if you’re someone like me–who checks Facebook and Twitter from a smartphone regularly and uses Google maps when I get lost, but who barely gets above 300MB of data per month because I don’t watch a lot of video on-the-go, and who typically streams music while in a Wi-Fi hot spot–then you’ll be fine with the tiered plans.

Also, remember that using Wi-Fi hot spots will reduce how much data you consume on your carrier’s network. If you use these data hefty applications in Wi-Fi hot spots, that usage doesn’t count against your monthly allotment, because you’ve offloaded the data consumption. So even if you’re a commuter, who likes to watch lots of video on the train, the train may have Wi-Fi, which will allow you to catch up on your TV and movie viewing without breaking the bank, even without an unlimited plan.And finally remember that no matter what you do, Verizon or AT&T or any other carrier for that matter, can change their pricing plans at any time. And if you’re not in a contract at that point or you’re ready for an upgrade, you’re at their mercy anyway.

I dont believe we can truly be free unless we also adopt sustainable practices in the form of energy,water and food so this would be
important as well.

I have always found it funny how many Americans will keep guns and ammo with the idea that they will defend their freedoms
and rights and yet make no attempt to provide
for their own food,water and energy.

you are not free when you rely on a government to provide your necesities of
life.

Do unto others,live and let live,mind your own business,be of service to others etc etc these would be important sayings in a village I want to live in.

I think I fell in love with the idea of a village while reading the lord of the rings
so the fantasy towns of Hobbiton and Bree
with good food, good beer and many different
types of people fulfilling differnt roles in the community appeals to me.

Thanks for reading

Ex-Vice President Al Gore, who did precisely nothing for the environment during his eight years in power, has unveiled plans for another ego-stroking exercise in climate change politics.

His Climate Reality project announced it would kick off with a 24-hour live streamed event on 14 September. The day’s schedule will include a new multimedia presentation by Gore, who unbelievably won an Oscar for his Inconvenient Truth slide show.

The danger is that he brings real, sincere environmental campaigns into disrepute.

In a world that is about to collapse due to the economic crimes of the financial community of which Gore is now a leading member, Climate change is off the agenda.  Gore knows perfectly well there is no chance that the reforms demanded by Climate change campaigners will be implemented.  Economic growth is the only thing that will delay the  collapse of the dollar, and with it Western economic supremacy.  And economic growth is the enemy of environmental campaigns since it is inevitably carbon intensive.

Nor does Gore ever admit that to really tackle climate change would require a massive increase in cost of living (ie decline in American living standards, although not in quality of life).

If Gore was really sincere in his wish to help the world, as opposed to merely inflating his own profile, then the Inconvenient Truth is that he should join with existing campaigns to end population growth.

As it is his new campaign aims at exposing “the full scale” of the climate crisis.

Gore came back into the spotlight last month in an essay in Rolling Stone in which he also accused Obama of failing to fight hard enough for climate action.

Gore’s talent for sickening hypocrisy is fully on display in the Rolling Stone article. He moralises against those who attack the integrity of climate change scientists, but it was those scientists who deliberately falsified, or ignored, or failed to report evidence, the most serious possible crimes in science.

He bemoans the pitiful level of debate in the United States on this and many other subject, but what did he or any other Democrat do to improve the quality of information available to the American people?  A few hundred million dollars a year for NPR would have given the nation a reliable, impartial news service, but that option has never been considered.

Tuesday’s announcement, which echoed some of the themes in Gore’s Rolling Stone piece, suggests the former vice-president needs publicity for some ulterior business motive.

“As the impacts of climate change are growing more prevalent, so is the resistance to finding the truth and implementing solutions. Just like the tobacco companies that spent decades in denial that smoking causes cancer, oil and coal companies are determined to sow denial and confusion about the science of climate change, ignore its impacts, and create apathy among our leaders,” the release said.

“This event is the first step in a larger, multifaceted campaign to tell the truth about the climate crisis and reject the misinformation we hear every day.

Gore gave further details of the project in an interview with the climate blogger Joe Romm, saying the event would feature a new 30-minute slideshow with video on extreme weather events. Gore will host the event from New York City, but new content will be added to the slide show for the 24 locations used in each time zone.

“Each site where a presentation originates will have basically the same 30-minute slide show, but with slides used in each time zone that illustrate particular impacts and particular efforts towards solutions at the venue representing than that time zone. And then the second 30 minutes of each hour will include a panel discussion focused on the climate crisis and the solutions to it from the perspective of leaders and scientists and others in that particular location. So it will be a 24-hour event,” he told Romm.

Flee the city -- study bushcraft

Not content with spending a night in a shack trying to create the next Royal Baby, Wills and Kate are set for a weekend of Moosehide tanning during a tour of Dechinta – a hippy haven in the NorthWest Territories.

The Royal couple are to visit the so-called “Bush University” and sample off-grid life as part of their hugely successful Canadian tour.

RoyalPrince William and Kate’s trip to Yellowknife this week will include a tour of Dechinta,  the”bush university,” giving them a chance to try their hand at “fish drying” as well as moosehide tanning.

Dechinta combines academia and aboriginal knowledge in a northern wilderness setting.

Students at Dechinta took part in a course on ‘writing from the land’ during the program’s pilot offering in June 2010.

The royal couple will travel by float plane to the Blachford Lake facility on Tuesday afternoon, following a packed day of activities in the Northwest Territories capital.

Following their 20-minute flight to Blachford Lake Lodge, where most of Dechinta’s programs are offered, William and Kate will be given an opportunity to try moosehide tanning and fish drying, as well as meet with Weledeh Dene elders, according to centre officials.

“We’ll start with a language lesson,” Kyla Kakfwi Scott, Dechinta’s program director, told media.

“They’ll be sitting down with one of our Weledeh language experts and learning how to introduce themselves and say ‘Thank you’ — sort of preparing them for the interaction with elders that will take place.”

Established last year, Dechinta offers university-accredited programs in which students live “off the grid” at Blachford Lake to learn about northern aboriginal culture, governance, and perspectives on climate change, education and other issues.

The intensive 12-week programs place equal value on Western-style academia and traditional aboriginal knowledge.

While at Dechinta, William and Kate will join a facilitated discussion on what Kakfwi Scott described as a “fireside lecture hall.”

“The chance to just have an open dialogue and open conversation, I would imagine that’s hard to come by.”

Yellowknife resident Moses Hernandez, who studied aboriginal self-governance at Dechinta last summer, will be among those who will take part in the conversation with the royal couple.

“We touched on issues that were really controversial — deep, thought-provoking stuff like decolonization,” Hernandez said.

“This time, I feel like I’ll be comfortable enough to explain how the experience [of Dechinta] affected me and to share that with the royal couple.”

Kakfwi Scott said Dechinta invited William and Kate to the facility because of their young age, as well as their focus on youth philanthropy.

New off-grid role model

As predicted here a year ago, the play Jerusalem was a smash hit when it opened on New York’s Broadway last week.