United Kingdom

A History of the World was a partnership between the BBC and the British Museum, involving schools, museums and audiences across the UK. One can listen to and download all the episodes of the radio series A History of the World in 100 objects.

One hundred 15-minute programmes, each focusing on an object from the British Museum’s collection told a history of two million years of humanity through the objects we have made, starting with the earliest object in the museum’s collection.

My personal highlights included the following:

1. Mummy of Hornedjitef (-260BC, Egypt): status, legacy, journey beyond death (see image).

2. Olduval Chopping Tool (-2m, Tanzania): adaptable, can skin and butcher animals

The Tinkering School allows children to build, experiment, become deeply immersed in and committed to projects (decoration has a special and surprising role to play).

Do many mainstream schools (still) offer such opportunities? If not, how can we help them do so?

Imagine too how many adults remain short of confidence about their own practical skills, and how such an approach might help them too.

"Earth hath not anything to show more fair..." Never been too sure about that, but undoubtedly our the city of my youth holds a special place in my heart.

The following animation shows the evolution of the capital from its days as Londinium in 50 AD, the commercial centre of the Roman Empire, to its present form as we know it today.

Contrast this with a 2014 drone's view of London.

This is a work in progress...

What is The Commons?

As explained in Jeremy Rifkin's website for The Zero Marginal Cost Society, the emerging Internet of Things is speeding us to an era of nearly free goods and services, precipitating the meteoric rise of a global "Collaborative Commons" and the eclipse of capitalism. Rifkin expanded on these ideas at the RSA in April 2014 (see video).

Sad to read of the passing of Colin Wilson, a truly open-minded polymath, whose books, exhaustive range of interests, freedom of expression and seemingly boundless productivity I long found inspiring.

See also:

Researchers have unearthed what are probably the only surviving recordings of the voices of Virginia Woolf, from 50 years earlier, of Alexander Graham Bell (below) and from a quarter of a century earlier still, perhaps the oldest sound recording of all, French schoolchildren singing Au clair de la lune.

The always eloquent Patrick Stewart excels himself in this passionate and moving response to a question about domestic abuse.

In Todmorden, Yorkshire, vegetables and herbs grow almost everywhere, even in the cemetery and outside the police station.  Everywhere you turn edible plants abound. In this talk given at TED London Salon, Pam Warhurst explained why and how she and others created Incredible Edible, a revolution not only in the way the town eats, but also in the way they think about public space, and which is inspiring other communites around the UK and increasingly, around the world.

An art student invented new vegetable packaging which is 100% biodegradable, with the label text created through laser cutting to avoid the use of ink.  What's more, the labels are embedded with seeds, so that a supermarket purchase can also result in a homegrown harvest.

According to research, the British think they bin almost 10% of their weekly shop.  With 8% wasting as much as a quarter of the food regularly bought, the research identified six types of people, each of whom wastes food in a different way.