PermaKent Permaculture Ideas of J. Kent Hastings

The following is a guest editorial by J. Neil Schulman “Instead Of A Comment” to amplify on the annoyance I expressed against PETA:
Don’t get me wrong. I have no objection to anyone choosing to be a vegetarian, a Vegan, or pro-Ana for that matter. Short of cannibalism by murder, everyone should eat — and not […]

Gardeners can fight pests while remaining organic by using beneficial insects to eat harmful bugs.
The fly in this ointment is that one of PETA’s recent campaigns is to treat the sale of common predator bugs the same as cows in the slaughterhouse or dogs from the pet store.
Don’t we get enough puritanism from the right? […]

Kurzweil AI links to a report of new windpower design selling for one dollar per watt.
Energy Daily:
“. . .efficient aerodynamic design lends itself to smaller wind turbines, which can operate closer to the ground or on a rooftop. They can handle a wide range of wind velocities, anywhere between 4 and 80 mph. They generate […]

The bacteria caused disease Salmonellosis is in the news with detectives tracking tainted tomatoes. It’s a serious issue:
In severe cases, the Salmonella infection may spread from the intestines to the blood stream, and then to other body sites and can cause death unless the person is treated promptly with antibiotics. . .Some people afflicted with […]

J. Neil Schulman told me that Fox News Channel aired a report about a Cuban refinery for Venezuelan oil. Here’s the Havana take on it.
An older report from another Cuban source says:
The Cienfuegos oil refinery, a new joint Cuba- Venezuela project, reached 112.9 percent its target production for the first two months of operation.
That’s an […]

Digg front page item links to a report from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research that I heard yesterday on right wing talk radio saying Al Gore’s energy usage is up 10% even after installing a token solar panel and geothermal pump.
As one commenter at Digg noticed, TCPR’s headline unfairly compares Gore’s annual usage […]

Inspired by the historic Victory Gardens of San Francisco, which supplied the area with 40% of the food consumed during WW2, and motivated by a desire to eliminate the high energy costs of trucked-in produce, the Alemany Farm started by volunteers taking over a former illegal dump as an experimental urban garden, with the […]

Times Online in the UK reports on the biofuel tech race in the U.S.:
Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi […]

One of my favorite scenes in the 1980 film, The Formula, is when the oil magnate played by Marlon Brando tells the detective named Barney played by George C. Scott, who’s been sniffing out clues on murders involving a Nazi-developed synfuel formula to “get out of the oil business, Barney.” At least Brando offers Scott […]

Marketing expert Alex Mandossian explains how he noticed Al Gore and Tipper were signing Joined at the Heart: The Transformation of the American Family at a local independent bookstore in Corte Madera back in 2002.
Alex found out later that despite a full parking lot and packed attendance inside a fairly large meeting room, only a […]

The co-author of the permaculture design title Edible Forest Gardens (2 volume set), Ed Toensmeier, has a new book out called Perennial Vegetables.
The publisher, Chelsea Green, describes it further in the subtitle:
From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-Grow Edibles
Cindy Dyer of the Garden Muse blog photographed Toensmeier receiving an […]

The RepRap Project (RepRap stands for “Replicating Rapid Prototyper”) has created a free open source “3D printer” machine that extrudes a fast setting plastic material suitable for building many products such as mechanical gears, tracks, wheels, gaskets, brackets, wine glasses, children’s toys, adult toys, keyboards, fasteners, hangers, enclosures, door stops, caps, connectors, levels (water in […]

Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, took issue with the Peak Oil catastrophists in some articles he wrote for magazines in 2006. Obviously, Hemenway is no oil company dupe. I see him as someone trying to give us a soft landing option precisely through his leadership in the permaculture movement.
“Apocalypse […]

One of Boing Boing’s editors, Mark Frauenfelder, must be in a “vegetative state” today, but at least he doesn’t have the steampunk fixation to Cory Doctorow’s extent. (Speaking of Steampunk, my brain puts today’s RepRap breakthrough news in that category.)
Back to Mark and his veggies, he’s joined the gardening brigades, but is having trouble identifying […]

LA Times Emerald City Blog reports a journey by a raft made of thousands of water bottles departing from Long Beach to Hawaii.
From the YouTube description:
Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal depart from the Long Beach Aquarium in California for Hawaii on a raft of 15,000 plastic bottles in order to help call attention […]

UK Guardian reports a possible breakthrough that could offset any warming effects of carbon dioxide emissions. A prototype that would remove more CO2 from the air than the device’s carbon cost to build and operate is planned to be demonstrated within two years. A diagram of the “CO2 Extractor” and a description of its discovery […]