Given my previous experience in reading Victorian-era literature (Dickens, Hardy, etc), I had thought that a book of scientific discussion would be even more weighty and inaccessible. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Darwin actually has a rather light touch to his writings, and even the rather complex and difficult ideas that he covers are easily digested. Ironically, the editor’s introduction (written by Burrow in 1968) is much denser in his language.

The world, or at least our understanding of it, was very different 150 years, and many great minds were working towards finding the answers to the many questions that surrounded them. Darwin wrote this book after many years of observing the world, and also discussing and learning the observations of many of his contemporaries.

Despite the books ‘changed the world’ status – much of what Darwin writes was not new in 1859, although all of the ideas about evolution and variation had probably never been collected into as comprehensive a theory.

One thing that I had to keep reminding myself was that the book was written 150 years, and that much more scientific investigation in to the subject has been conducted which has shaped the Theory of Evolution into its current form. This was most prevalent whenever Darwin discussed the cause and effect of variation (and why a variation might continue through multiple generations) – although it is understandable that this should be an unknown for Darwin since the science of genetics was to take a few decades to come about, and then the actual mechanism (DNA) wouldn’t be understood until well over a century after he wrote his book.

The Origin of Species is an excellent start for people interested in biology and searching for answers as to why life on the planet is the way it is. But it does need to be followed up with reading on the vast amount of work that has taken place over the intervening 150 years.

National Geographic ran an article recently about the global food crisis, something that is easy to forget is happening to most people in the Western world, since we don’t suffer the same shortages as parts of the world like sub-Saharan Africa. While Australia does have limited resources, the majority of the population are able to afford reasonable diets (in some cases, rather opulent and wasteful ones). In Europe and North America, the global crisis is further masked by the fact that many farmers are actually paid not to produce food crops, because there is nowhere for the food to go.

So, if the West is producing so much food, why are people going without?

The common answer is distribution – the food is being produced in the wrong place. But it isn’t just a simple case of loading up the ships and trucks with grain and transporting it to where people are hungry. For one thing, the costs of transporting the food will typically be added to the point of consumption, and given the incredibly low income in the most hunger-stricken areas, they couldn’t afford it. Also, there is a problem of infrastructure – shipping grain is great, but there is no industry in these areas which can adequately process it all into actual foodstuffs – and the people are stuck having to spend most of their time gathering and preparing their food and so are stuck living a subsistence-only lifestyle (something that hardly anyone of my age in Australia or the UK or the US has to do these days).

So, what is the answer. Help people grow enough food locally to support a community, and then help the community develop away from subsistence to productive existence.

In the 1960s and 70s, India underwent a large-scale Green Revolution – and began producing enough food to support a move from an agrarian society to a strong technological and industrial power. However, this came at a cost as the intensive use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers have had ongoing effects on the health of the population and the environment of the country.

National Geographic looked at a number of similar projects being undertaken in sub-Saharan Africa, some that appear doomed to make the same mistakes as were made in India, but others that are looking for better methods. Soil, Foods and Healthy Communities is one such group in Malawi, and while they started relatively small a few years ago, they are slowly expanding their methods and producing new methods and techniques.

Mostly, SFHC is helping famers in northern Malawi to improve the quality of their land using natural methods like the burial of crop residues (once the food is gathered, there is a bunch of leftover vegetation that can be used to regenerate the soil), and by using ‘intercropping’ (growing beans and grain together in the same field).

SFHC’s approach is working, and life is improving for the local community around the farms where SFHC are involved, but they need more support to keep expanding their coverage.

I hope that they can continue their work – and that Western farming can learn from their lessons.

I got home tonight to find my Nintendo Wii flashing an alert at me (it gets updates over a wireless network to my broadband connection).

When I checked the incoming messages, I was informed out that Nintendo have decided to release their Internet Channel for free.

Channels are basically software applications which are installed on the Wii’s hard disc. Some provide access to game data without needing to load the game, while others, like the Internet and Photo Channels offer specific enhancements to the Wii experience.

The Internet Channel is not lightweight – it occupies about 10% of the available storage on the console, probably due to the installation of Adobe’s FlashPlayer. Still, I figured I’d give it a go.

I’d never downloaded anything from the Wii Shop before – next time I’ll be sure to mute the television when I do, since the progress bar involves Mario running and killing a bunch of Goomba’s with a very annoying repeated ‘bling’ everytime he gets one. Thankfully, it didn’t take too long.

Sound is also an issue when using the browser in the channel – there are clicks and twurps as you wave the wand around the page to hover over links and also when scrolling and zooming.

I was surprised to find that the browser was built on top of Opera (I guess, with their relative success on mobile platforms it did make sense for them to be approached for a console browser) – although the only reason you’d know is the badge when you first start and the big ‘O’ on the home button. The rest of the design fits the typical aerogel of the Wii interface.

Web pages load pretty quick, although some elements seemed to take longer to render (for example, the banner up the top). I also didn’t notice any major issues with CSS/HTML breaking. Text is a bit hard to read on my screen, but I have a 15 year old 24″ CRT. However, since the Wii doesn’t have a HD output, standard browsing will likely be problematic on any screen. You can zoom in and the text becomes legible – but this then incurs horizontal scrolling on most sites.

You only have a choice of Google or Yahoo as your in-browser search, but you can use any other search engine as a web page.

Visiting YouTube redirects to the YouTube XL platform, designed for consoles. Image quality is pretty good (the videos I watched were at minimum the same quality as the television itself), but the platform skips frames as a bandwidth saving measure. I have to admit, though, that the movies didn’t pause while the cache was topped up.

For a free browser you can use on your television, I think that this is pretty good. I wouldn’t have downloaded it when it cost 500 points, though (I’m not entirely sure on the dollar to point ratio at the moment, but I think that is about $5-10).

There are a couple of issues – the aforementioned navigation sounds as you use it are a bit annoying. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any parental control for the channel at all – meaning any family member could access any content (not a problem for me – but seeing as I know a number of families with young children and a household Wii, it isn’t ideal for them).

Still – if you have a Wii, and don’t mind it eating 10% of the storage, give it a try. At the least, you can remove and have not lost anything but a little bit of bandwidth for the download.