Ear to the Digital Ground

Posted by: Shane Arbuthnott on: November 5, 2010

• In: Intern Blog Post | Uncategorized
• 1 Comment

One of the genuine joys of my position here is the duty to keep my ear out for co-op news. It means reading a lot of engaging articles, and then spreading the word. Local food and renewable energy (two subjects I’m already passionate about) seem to come up a lot.

Today, my news alert pointed me towards  this article by Paul Gipe. The article is about renewable energy initiatives in Ontario, particularly focusing on the Pukwis project. It’s published by renewableenergyworld.com, an international news site devoted to renewable energy initiatives, and talks about the incredible surge in renewable energy being created by the combination of government tariffs, groups like OSEA and local communities (many of them First Nations). It’s a good example of the way multiple factors, legislative and local, come together to change things. It’s interesting to see how this province-wide movement hinges on the actions of smaller local communities.

Of course, this was one of eight stories I was directed to. Most of them had nothing to do with co-operatives, but used the adjective “co-operative” somewhere and thus were flagged for my attention. (I get some of these daily, mostly from police reports. I’m beginning to get the impression that police questioning sessions are one lovely conversation after another.)

And then there are the articles that seem to have nothing to do with co-ops or co-operation at all, but end up in my news alerts anyway. Like this (somewhat problematic) blog post about the current academic performance gap between boys and girls. Interesting enough (or perhaps infuriating enough, with its stodgy understanding of gender roles) that I read it on a break, but not at all related to my subject.

Is it odd that I consider these random entries in my alerts a perk, rather than a problem?