eXe: the eLearning XHTML editor |

By , July 10, 2005 9:10 pm

eXe: the eLearning XHTML editor |

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Haven’t spent much time on this site but it looks interesting for teachers if no one else.

New Scientist Breaking News – String, mud and bamboo make a quake-proof house

By , July 10, 2005 9:00 am

New Scientist Breaking News – String, mud and bamboo make a quake-proof house
“Most of these houses are do-it-yourself, and we’ve never quite grasped the enormity of the practical side. The new technique has a huge potential application in south and central America, central Asia and India,” says structural engineer Michael Griffith of the University of Adelaide, South Australia.

The above is taken out of context but sums up what I have seen as a problem with BIG science and BIG business, for quite a few years.

Where a poor man looks at what is here and available and cheap or free a consultant or scientist studying the problem thinks about what is available with corporate funding or grant money and how the [ house, crop, fence, water supply ] can be replaced or redesigned to work better.

Big gap between one and the other.

I have a problem with using old or making do even when new is available. Would rather use mud than cement. Or new cement anyway.

I like the idea of tying or bracing the adobe walls with bamboo. I have seen pix of 3rd world slums where something similar was done. They had build with old brick (it looked like) and used bamboo and wire or rope (or whatever they could get) and pieces of corrugated tin to sandwich the brick in between. Not quite the same concept as drilling the holes but I suspect that hovel was cooler/warmer than the ones around it made with just tin, packing crate scraps and cardboard.

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