oneafrikan.com

My good friend Peter has just gotten off his arse and done his blog up all nice and proper, with content and all. Of course it took me ages to get the server sorted out, install the blog engine, and theme and some photos, but who’s counting? I humbly recommend reading him if you’re interested in SA, my opinion is that in 10 years he’ll be better known, but don’t wan to put any pressure on him…

_ About

Peter Nixon is a professional accountant who grew a conscience and has now dedicated his life to changing the world for the better. He was born in South Africa in 1976 and lived in England from 1988 to 1991 before returning to South Africa. Initially he studied to become an accountant, registering as a Chartered Accountant in 2003. However this did not fill him with a sense of purpose and fulfilment and he went back to study, completing an honours degree in International Relations in 2006. Africa is where his heart lies and he wants more than anything to see Africa succeed in the world.

In the guise of the Mercenary Chef he mercilessly invades kitchens in order to cook dinner, see his friends, meet new people and discuss weighty topics.

Anything he says on this website is his own partially informed opinion and you rely on what he says at your own peril. He also accepts no responsibility for plagiarism or stolen ideas – credit will be given where possible, but he reads a lot of stuff and it is difficult to keep track of everything. This is just what he is currently thinking about, and what he thinks about and believes is subject to change without notice.

If you’re interested in population ecology or population dynamics or just sustainability, then you might find this interesting…

_ Population size of the Earth now vs population size over history

If you add up the total number of humans who have ever lived and compare that total to the number of people walking around on the planet today, you’ll find that there are more people alive now than the sum total of all humans who have ever lived in the entire history of humanity.

If you’re just a geek, you’re probably going to mention this at some stage anyways

Seriously though, this is not a nice or encouraging graph to look at (which are these days?), and totally makes you wonder how the hell we’re going to support such a large human population in years to come…. ;-(

Thanks to Jeff for pointing me to this.

Last year amidst the Live8 concert and the G8 Summit at Gleneagles, I set up G8Reboot with Damien, in an effort to raise the profile of the G8 Summit and it’s importance. Our position was that there are a lot of web sites, and there are a lot of web users, and probably a high percentage of them are either apathetic or simply don’t know enough about the G8. Also we’re African, and with the focus of last years Live 8 concert on poverty, and some of the G8 focus on Africa, it made sense…

So the idea was to get people to do a reboot of their web sites / blogs / home pages the day before the concert and the summit began, to highlight the issue to the people that visited their sites. During the time before that we asked site owners to add a button to their site, to get more people involved.

All in all we did about 12k hits to the site in the 10 days leading up to the Summit, with traffic coming from various sources, and about 60k hits up until I stopped counting late August last year.

So in my book the initiative was a success although there’s no way to really tell whether the message was gotten accross – we can only hope that the message of “Every single day, 30,000 children die, needlessly, of extreme poverty.” hit home with some people.

This year, I’ve wanted to get it up again in time for the G8 Summit in Russia, building on what we did last year, but I’ve just not had the time needed to dedicate to it and neither has Damien. So I feel kinda guilty and a little bit like a loser – I had hoped to get things moving by the start of June, which then moved to end June / start July, but client work has just had to be the priority (unfortunately keeping a roof over my head, food on the table and building a business has been more of a pressing priority).

My gut feel is that I should pick my battles, and do what I’ve got planned instead for the summit next year in Germany (In the summer of 2007, the annual G8 Summit comes to Germany. The meeting will take place in the Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, an exclusive health resort on the East Sea. Heiligendamm is about 20km west of Rostock, 200km from Berlin.), so that there is time to do it properly and to do it the justice that I would really like to.
There also hasn’t been much press about the 2006 Summit in the UK, but there does seem to be a lot more going on online about the Summit in 2007, for what reason I’m not entirely sure.

That said, my gut feel is based on my current situation and on no external input, so it’s not too late to do something, even if it’s something small, but I don’t have the time over the next two weeks to do it all on my own. We don’t live in a perfect world, so I’m happy to concede that something is better than nothing at all…

So, I’m asking you in earnest – what do you think? Should we do something? Would you help me by giving half an hour to an hour of your time to get the word out? Any comments or feedback would be much appreciated