The Leap Manifesto is an unashamedly radical plan to convert the world to 100% renewable energy, fast. And you can be a part of it
Leap day is coming up at the end of the month remember this one?
Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November. All the remainder have thirty one, except February, on its own, which has twenty eight most times. And in a leap year, twenty nine.
I get interested in leap years a few months ago when a group of us in Canada were trying to come up with a title for an independent political platform we had just drafted. The document launched during our recent federal election and signed by thousands and thousands of Canadians was a roadmap to get the country entirely off fossil fuel by the mid-century or sooner, in line with what many scientists are telling us we must do, and what technologists are telling us we now can do.
And we wanted to go further: the plan argues that in the process of fundamentally changing our country to make it green, we also have a once-in-a-century opportunity to make it fairer. We could redress terrible incorrects done to indigenous peoples; radically reduce economic, racial and gender inequalities; eliminate legal double the criteria for immigrant workers; and create a whole lot of stable, well-paying tasks. In very un-Canadian fashion, we even dared to hope that the manifesto might become a model for similar broad-based confederations in other countries.
The text we came up with was unabashedly radical, and it went on to be endorsed by more than 100 organisations. An array of Canadian celebrities also added their names: Leonard Cohen, Donald Sutherland and Ellen Page, among others.
Our first challenge was what to call it. We wanted to convey the necessity of achieving speed, since as Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UN framework convention on climate change, said recently: Where capital goes in the next five years will decide what kind of world we have.
One suggestion was The Leap. And yes, we worried about inevitable comparings to Mao Zedongs disastrous Great Leap Forward. But what ultimately tip-off the balance in its favour was when we realised that 2016 is a leap year.
It wasnt just good timing, we supposed, but a powerful analogy. After all, we periodically add an extra day to our calendars because if we didnt, the seasons would gradually fall out of alignment and eventually the seasons would go wacky. Imaging New Yorkers doing their Christmas shopping in T-shirts( oh right, that happened ).
It was Julius Caesar, in 46 BC, who decided to bring the 365 -day solar calendar to the Romans, throwing in that extra day every four years. He wasnt known as a humble man, but even a dictator in perpetuity realised that it was easier to change regulations written by other humen than it is to change the laws of nature.
Thats a lesson worth re-learning and fast. Like the Romans with their failing calendar, we find ourselves trapped within multiple failing systems: economic, political, even spiritual. And all these system failings have put humanity on a collision course with countries around the world, which warms and writhes the more we refuse to recognise its limits.
To much fanfare, our governments unveiled a global climate handled in Paris. Photograph: Francois Mori/ AP
Thats why we chose The Leap as the name for our manifesto: the gap between where we are and where we need to be is so great, and the time so short, that small steps simply will not cut it.
With this in mind, the manifesto not only calls for a rapid change to 100% renewable electricity, it insists that these new energy projects should be democratically controlled and that indigenous peoples should be first to receive public is supportive of their own clean energy projects. So should communities currently dealing with heavy health the health effects of polluting industrial activity.
To pay for all this, we called for dramatic changes to how public revenues are collected and spent, from an end to fossil fuel subsidies, and higher royalty rates on fossil fuel extraction, to cuts in military spending. And those are just a few of its 15 demands.
The plan captured the imagination of many Canadians. Burned out by decades of the struggle against what they dont want tar sands pipelines, explosion petroleum develops, draconian security bills they seized on the chance to rally around a vision for the world they actually wishes to. On leap day later this month, there will be sessions, teach-ins and other events across the country, all of them pushing our new government to adopt a holistic approach to the twin crisis of climate change and inequality.
Two millennia ago, Julius Caesar realised that there was something even more powerful than his empire: the planets revolution around the sunlight. Today, we need a different kind of solar revolution, one that doesnt only change how we generate our power, but also who benefits.
Heres the good news: we have the momentum to make that leap from the recent victories against Keystone XL and Shells Arctic drilling, to the surprising strength of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.
So take a minute or two to be considered the extra day at the end of this month. Its a reminder that people can indeed are working together to change a failing decide of rules. The the statutes of nature , not so much.
Then lets make this 2016 the year we started to bridge the chasm between what is, and what must be. Lets make it the year we started to leap.
The Leap Manifesto, along with a listing of its original signatories, can be read in 10 languages here. To find out about leap year activities visit leapyear2 016. org. On Friday 5 February, Naomi Klein is co-hosting a leap year-themed Google hangout with Bill McKibben of 350. org, Asad Rehman of Friends of the Earth and others. Register here.
Earlier this week, we reported onan endlessly creepy puzzle video that was confounding and unsettling everyone who watched it. In the working day since, the narrative has grown far strangerbut the identity of the person responsible for the threatening messages remains as clouded as ever.
The video, which spread quickly across YouTube and was allegedly discovered on a DVD on a park bench in Spain, contains a apparently endless number of puzzles, both obvious and obscure. Numerous interested parties have been working to unearth the mysteries held within, and several bits of new information have emerged.
Perhaps most disturbing revelation of all is that the Morse code puzzle, which was translated into RED LIPSLIKE TENTH, has been discovered to be an anagrams of KILL THE PRESIDENT. This, coupled with the previously discovered hidden GPS coordinates of the White House, paints a vivid menace.
The disturbing video clip hid images in its audio track that could only be decoded with advanced software. The photos, which included a woman being strangled, a disemboweled body, and other graphic scenes, have been traced to various sources on the Internet.
One of the embedded photos is from a horror movie called The Bunny Game , another is from a German film called Slasher , and a third is an actual crime-scene photo showing a victim of Albert DeSalvo, better known as the Boston Strangler. While all of the photos are disturbing , none of them originated with the video itself. This should offer a little bit of relief to those speculate that the clip came from a serial murderer showcasing his crimes.
As for the source of the video, one apparently promising result comes from a cached version of a now-defunct website. The blog for Triton TV, a University of California, San Diego film group, indicated a screencap of the disturbing video along with a title and description written solely in binary code. The Daily Dot reached out to Triton TV only to discover that the blog in question had been hacked only weeks prior. Whoever brought down the site chose to upload whatever creepy YouTube videos they could find, seemingly at random, in its endeavour to troll people.
Another result also failed to pan out when one Parker Wright, whose name was on one of the accounts that uploaded the video, was mistaken for another Parker Wright.
Amateur sleuths had closely watched the Twitter account of Parker J. Wright, expecting it to yield new information. The Daily Dot reached out to him to see if he participated in the video, but he was just as disturbed by it as everyone else and promptly denied any association with it or its creators.
@MikeWehner A bunch of people are tweeting me about it. No I was not involved in that video in any way.
Not all results have led to dead end. Some serious digging brought confirmation of the place where the video was shooting. The derelict building shown in the video is the Zofiwka Sanatorium located in Otwock, Poland. The now-abandoned build was once a mental-health facility.
Photoblogger Miniwycieczkicaptured an image in 2013 from a room in the facility that appears almost identical to the images seen in the video.
A more recent photo, whichSzary Burekcaptured in April2 015, also shows the room, and this time it includes all of the subtle details visible in the video clip, including the graffiti that appears as the video progresses.
There’s little doubt that this is the building in the video. Devoted that it is abandoned, it’s impossible to know who might have decided to use it as a backdrop for their unsettling puzzle.
Mike Wehner
The dates of the photos confirm that the video was generated sometime between November 2013 and April 2015. The video was first considered online on May 9, 2015.
The tech blog that most recently acquired the video, GadgetZZ, used to say the disc it received received from Poland, but the uploader of the original YouTube copy, AETBX, maintained that it was found on a park bench in Spain.
Hundreds of people continue to investigate new results and post their findings on Reddit.
Experts from 15 countries tell regulation needed to prevent vulnerable patients pursuing unproven and potentially deadly treatments
Medical and legal experts from around the world have unified to call for more stringent regulation of stem cell therapies to prevent people pursuing unproven and potentially deadly treatments overseas.
In a perspective piece for the US journal Science Translational Medicine, 15 experts from countries including the UK, the US, Canada, Belgium, Italy and Japan wrote that national efforts alone would not be enough to counter an industry offering unproven therapies to vulnerable patients.
Stem cell-based interventions are classified under diverse and potentially incompatible national regulatory frameworks, the authors wrote.
Approaches for international regulation not only need to develop consistent regulations over the commercialisation of medical practices and products but also need to give them teeth by developing cross-border partnerships for compliance.
Stem cells found in bone marrow and umbilical cord blood have long been used to successfully treat blood cancers including leukaemia and some immune illness. But those are among the few proven therapies. Legitimate and ethics-approved clinical trials by academic centres are also resulting, investigating the potential of stem cells to treat a wider range of diseases.
But some physicians are directly offering to the general public stem cell treatments for illness still under clinical trial or for which no evidence exists and for which the safety and efficacy is as yet unproven.
Deaths as a result of stem cell treatments have already resulted. In 2013 Sheila Drysdale died in a New South Wales nursing home after undergoing an unproven liposuction stem-cell therapy at a western Sydney clinic. Following Drysldales death, her doctor, Ralph Bright, gave a statement to police in which he claimed that stem-cell therapy could improve comorbidities and that stem cells could move from joints to other parts of the body to improve illnes in distant sites including lungs and brain, vision, mentation and pain.
In his report into Drysdales death, the coroner Hugh Dillon wrote that he could not say what motivated Dr Bright to perform this unproven, dubious procedure on Sheila Drysdale.
But regardless of his motivating, Dr Brights performance as a medical practitioner was, for the reasons outlined above, poor and resulted in Sheila Drysdales death.
The Medical Council of NSW investigated Bright and placed a number of restrictions on his right to practise. Bright is still authorised to practise stem cell therapy for patients with osteoarthritis or who are taking part in research studies approved by an ethics committee. He is also still allowed to treat patients returning for remaining injections of stored cells.
In 2013 a Queensland woman, Kellie van Meurs, died when she travelled to Russia to undergo stem-cell treatment for a rare neurological disorder. She died of a heart attack as a result.
Australias drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, last year sought feedback on the regulation of autologous stem-cell therapies but is yet to publish those submissions. A TGA spokeswoman said the Administration was still examining the options for changes to the legislation to reflect public and industry opinions. The TGA currently considers autologous therapies, which involve treating someone with their own tissue or cells, to be a therapeutic good and, hence, does not govern them. Stem cells used for medical practise and therapeutic purposes are covered by different regulatory frameworks.
Associate Professor Megan Munsie, a University of Melbourne stem cell scientist and a co-author of the paper, said: The notion that stem cells are magical holds court in the community, along with this idea the advances in treatment are being held up by red tape.
Unethical health practitioners exploited this, she said, along with the vulnerability of patients with difficult-to-treat or incurable conditions.
There is a precedent for international regulation of this industry because regulations already exist around narcotics the way they are manufactured, she said.
This could be extended to the regulation to the stem cell and tissue-based therapies. This international stance would then force or foster stronger local regulations.
There have been successful endeavors by scientists to push back against unscrupulous physicians. In Italy scientists and regulators highlighted the unproven yet government-subsidised treatments being offered by the entrepreneur Davide Vannoni and fought to stop him. He was convicted of criminal charges but the sentence was subsequently suspended.
( CNN) After President-elect Donald Trump’s recent victory, some of his supporters celebrated by flying Confederate battle flags from pickup trucks and waving them at rallies.
But Trump’s victory may mark the resurgence of the Old South in another more sinister route: The return of “racial amnesia.”
That’s what some historians are saying as they watch a familiar storyline emerge. Trump’s triumph is now being roundly described as a insurrection by white working-class voters; racism, sexism and religious intolerance had little, if anything, to do with it.
Whether its asking what happens when you watch Sexuality and the City 2 more than 50 periods or which Oscar has won an Oscar, theres no question a podcast somewhere hasnt answered
1 Richard Ayoade utilized a ThunderCats duvet cover until he was in his late 20 s
Adam Buxtons life-affirming, jingle-packed ramble chats with his celebrity guests are a constant delight. In this two-parter, the multi-talented Ayoade went into everything from the height of pillows to the reaction to his notoriously awkward interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy. As funny as the pod is, you are able to learn a lot, too from Buxtons honest discussions of sorrow when his dad died to how upsetting Sara Pascoe finds it when people make clicky sticky noises with their mouths.
Other lessons from this podcast Louis Theroux does a fine rendition of Yes Sir, I Can Boogie. Ellie Violet Bramley
If you are familiar with Gladwells work, then Revisionist History is both a treat and familiar territory. The New Yorker novelist often takes assumptions and things we might think to be true and unravels them to end up in a different place altogether. In his bestseller Blink, he explained why it might not have been so unusual that an unarmed man was shot 41 periods by New York police. In the best episode of Revisionist History, Gladwell seemed back at Toyotas sudden unintended acceleration phenomenon, which led to a gigantic fine for the car manufacturer. The conclusion after we listen to a 911 call in which a man is driven to his death by a car that wont slow down was not that the cars accelerators were sticking, but that drivers unfamiliar with certain vehicles were having a brain malfunction that entailed they were physically unable to differentiate between the brake and the accelerator.
Other lessons from this podcast American colleges with the nicest canteens are the worst choices for poor students; if you want to score the most free-throws in basketball, do them underarm. Will Dean
3 One day, everyone in Sweden switched to driving on the opposite side of the road
You neednt be an architecture or design fanatic to enjoy Roman Marss gentle unpicking of how the world around us came to look and function as it does. As well as stories about the origins of the inflatable humen they have outside vehicle dealers in the US, and why they used to publicize missing children on milk cartons, you can learn about Hgertrafikomlggningen , or H-day 3 September 1967 when everyone in Sweden switched from driving on the left side of the road to the right.
How do we know that Hillary Clinton enjoyed a Cuban sandwich and a beer at the end of a day on the road? Well, she had her own campaign podcast, about the little details of being on the trail. In the first episode, Max Linsky, of the podcast Longform, talked to her in Miami about what she was going to have for dinner that evening. As the first presidential nominee to have a campaign podcast, Clinton tried to harness the power of the medium to presents a more personable side of herself. Suffice to say, it didnthave the desired effect.
Other lessons from this podcast Clinton is a TED talks fan and has to ration her Elena Ferrante novels. EVB
Pots-and-pans marketings supremo Belinda Blumenthal can find lust in any situation even when she is lost in an ornamental maze. The starring of the erotic fiction written by comedian Jamie Mortons father has taught the world that a regional sales meeting has just as much potential for naked fun as a business trip-up to Amsterdam. Other things she has appropriated into her libidinous realm include a charity tombola, Herb Alpert, a chalet, a pomegranate, a horsebox and any sentence involving the words further access. What she has taught listeners about her ridiculously sexy life is a possibility unsavoury, but via Mortons podcast it has brought a whole lot of mirth.
Other lessons from this podcast There is such a thing as a vaginal lid; never read erotic fiction written by your daddy. Hannah Verdier
6 Sacha Baron Cohen has been known to use a getaway car
Marc Marons WTF can be off-putting: the hosts 15 -minute opening monologue and guitar jams are often enough to deter new listeners. But when it comes to teasing out colorful details from the careers of some of Hollywoods funniest and finest, Maron is the master. Grimsby may have bombed in the cinemas, but it was worth it for the interview Baron Cohen did with Maron to promote the cinema. The best bits were the details of the logistical difficulties of making Brno, from how a redneck fight crowd were deceived into watching a homoerotic romp to how Baron Cohen managed to escape Kansas police after being caught with, among other things, a pedal-powered sexuality machine in a hotel room.( He had a automobile waiting outside with the engine running .)
Alix Fox pries into the complicated and fascinating lives of people for whom sex is not always entirely straightforward, from a polyamorous couple to a man paralysed from the waist down just before his honeymoon. An extraordinary interview with double-barrelled Hazel, who talked openly about the effect her condition has had on her and may have on her if she wants to have infants is the standout so far.
Other lessons from this podcast Russian-doll-style dildos can cure vaginismus; having cold feet can help to delay an orgasm. LH
The centuries-old assumption that there are only four meats beef, lamb, pork and chicken is crumbling after unconfirmed reports that the European Space Agency has identified a mysterious fifth meat. The Beef and Dairy Network podcast, produced by comedian Ben Partridge, is the No 1 podcast for those involved or simply interested in the production of beef animals and dairy herds. Featuring guest appearances from agricultural experts such as Josie Long, and attracting fans including Miranda Sawyer, it is a surreal beefstravaganza.
Other lessons from this podcast According to Beef and Dairy Network sponsor Mitchells, 90% of livestock can kick through a ships hull after just one month of taking hoof-strengthening supplement Steel Hoof Deluxe. EVB
For a decade, long-time comedy partners John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman set the world to rights via the medium of their audio newspaper for a visual world. Their riffs on anything from civil liberty( Like dogs, John, we love our own, but we get actually vexed when other people civil liberties keep shitting on our lawns) to Texas barbecues( All I know is this, Andy: if I was a cow, and I knew that I could savour like that, Id find it very hard to make a coherent example for not being instantly killed and slow-cooked) often attained the prove the funniest thing you could get on Wi-Fi. With Oliver having left the Daily Show to front his own display on HBO, the Bugle went into satirical hibernation. It awoke in mid-October, just in time for a political event so ridiculous that even Zaltzman at his most surreal couldnt have imagined it. The pods Have I Got News for You-style rotating guest co-hosts now include US comics Wyatt Cenac and Hari Kondabolu, as well as Brit Nish Kumar and brilliant Indian standup Anuvab Pal. They dont know each other as well as best friends Zaltzman and Oliver, but perhaps the other co-host, Andys sister Helen, could claim an advantage on that front. The Bugle is dead, long live the Bugle.
In a residential area of west London, inside a build with a banner that reads Elgone Driving Academy, is a guy in his 50 s who looks a bit like William Hurt and who was the one-man operation helping to provide the medications used for capital punishment in the US. That was until a human rights charity alerted the UK government to his pharmaceutical broom closet of demise. In the inaugural episode of More Perfect, a Radiolab spin-off looking at how US supreme court cases affect lives miles away from the bench, the presenters investigated those three little words from the US constitution: cruel and unusual.
Other lessons from this podcast An unusual 911 call made in Houston, Texas, in 1998, led to one of the most important point LGBTQ rights decisions in the courts history, effectively stimulating homosexual relations a basic civil right. EVB
11 The political insiders word for people panicking about a Trump win was bedwetters
A politics podcast hosted by Barack Obamas former speechwriter and a senior communications consultant ought to scream wonkishness, but Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer may be the two most engaging analysts of a bonkers election campaign. Having been at the heart of two US election blizzards, they alongside other hosts Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor know, inside-out, how this world works and share it. Their near certainty about a Clinton win up to the morning of the election induced 1600 one of the most reassuring political podcasts you could listen to and induce their morning-after mea culpa on 9 November all the more extraordinary. Now its truly time to wet the bed.
Comedians and co-podcast hosts Phoebe Robinson and Jessica Williams went where two black women have never gone before a Billy Joel concert. They sneaked in their ros in suntan lotion bottles bought on Amazon the kind that get white girls, watching the Shins, through Coachella. And, having been given front-row tickets because Billy likes to see fairly women up at the front, they got to shake his baby-soft hands. If thats not informative enough for you, listen to the other episodes of this snort-out-loud-funny podcast from WNYC and hear some of New Yorks best female comedians talking about sex, romance, race, hair journeys and living in the city.
Other lessons from this podcast Pierce Brosnans volcano thriller Dantes Peak has a lot to tell us about how far we have come since the 90 s; talcum powder is the best method to deal with boob sweat. EVB
Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson host the anti-slut-shaming podcast, featuring interviews with everyone from Jon Ronson to Stoya( and, as the title gently suggests, people with whom they have had sexuality ). Their interview with Wendi Kent or, as they call her, White Precious who photographs protesters outside abortion clinics, uncovered the reason she can no longer feed capers and what its like to have sex when youre homeless. But its not all heavy-going. The episode titles alone are a treat good luck concealing You didnt go to France because you wanted to masturbate ?, His pubes were haunted? and Period sex: thoughts? from fellow commuters.
Other lessons from this podcast DIY HIV tests can be done at home( or on-air) with a mouth swab; comedians on the circuit all hook up with each other. LH
A lot of time, effort and fund, especially money, went into making this film, says Guy Montgomery. Weve just opened up the most disgusting can of worms. Theres no need to watch SatC2 because he and Tim Batt have done it more than 50 hours for the sake of their podcast( they did the same with Grown Ups 2 ). Mirandas nanny Magda is a spy who is gradually poisoning her, Charlotte is the other one and the whole thing is screaming out for the kind of dialogue that induced the Tv series great.
Other lessons from this podcast We Are Your Friends is next on your hatewatch listing. HV
Slates week-by-week analysis of Serial, 2014 s podcast obsession, is perfect for when everyone else you know is listening far too slowly offering tale recaps, whodunnit hypothesis and critiques of the host, Sarah Koenig. Not to mention digging deep down into Reddit rabbit holes about the two cases covered so far.
Other lessons from this podcast The cow birth in season two can be seen as an agricultural metaphor for the militarys response to Bowe Bergdahls disappearance; its almost impossible to map a timeline via audio. LH
Jonathan Goldsteins Heavyweight aims to the tell the stories of people whose lives have taken a wrong turn somewhere. One of these was to reunite his 80 -year-old father with his elder friend before it was too late. Another was to reunite his friend Gregor who is haunted by the moment he loaned a box of Cds to a techno-producer friend. The friend, was, of course, Moby, who employed many of them as the basis for his squillion-selling Play. Gregor doesnt want royalties he just wants his Cds back. And Goldstein helps him get them.
Other lessons from this podcast Tracking down your school bullies is an uncomfortable eye-opener( as demonstrated by Julia in episode seven ). HV
Although Serial was essentially a piece of investigative journalism, its format proved that podcasting didnt need to be limited in its form. Gimlet Media, functional specialists podcasting company, emerged around the same time as that NPR made and proved its aspirations in the field. Its scripted drama, Homecoming, aimed straight for the stars with a casting including Catherine Keener, Star Wars Oscar Isaac and David Schwimmer. The narrative flips between Keeners characters work at an experimental facility that helps soldiers incorporate back into the community and her present-day life as a waitress. There are plenty of cliffhangers helping to tell the story of what happened in between.
Other lessons from this podcast You dont mess with David Schwimmer. As Colin Belfast, he oozes rage and has the air of a human on the leading edge. HV
18, 19, 20 France buys in most of its frogs legs only one person called Oscar has won an Oscar Donald, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck are the most reprinted comic book characters( that arent superheroes) of all time
Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann( plus Martin the soundman) solve listeners queries on a fortnightly basis with questions ranging from the practical to the ethical to the ridiculous. Suffice to say, you are able to learnt more listening to them while doing the washing up than from Heart FM. You will also learn that drunken voicemails are greet, especially from Dave from Smethwick and Graham from Canada.( Its Oscar Hammerstein II, by the way .) LH
The Guardian publishes a wide range of award-winning podcasts daily, from Football Weekly to the Guardian Books podcast, all of which are available on our site, iTunes and other resulting podcast platforms .
