Stalker's eye was caught by a heading on a book review recently. The heading read - "Embrace your inner geek, grow mushrooms and turn off the vampire power."
The book review was for a hefty tome entitled Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century, edited by Alex Steffen 608pp, published by Abrams, priced at GBP 24.95.
Almost every page offers some new and seductive nugget of geeky jargon. "Vampire power" is the energy drained by electronic devices left on standby rather than switched off; apparently, this costs most of us about a fifth of our household electricity bills.
The mushroom connection is "Mycoremediation" : the use of mushrooms to purify polluted land. Oyster mushrooms not only flourish on an oil spill, but actually clean it up too. And there's a bit on a "compostable tent city" -you'll have to buy it to find out about that concept.
Around 60 writers have contributed to the book and as the reviewer puts it: " keep this book beside your bed or bath, and skim through its pages whenever you need to be re-enthused about the future."
