PermaKent Permaculture Ideas of J. Kent Hastings

This Oregonian article about Ty Adams describes his conversion of a recreational vehicle into a sustainability demonstration.
“It runs on biodiesel, has solar panels for its electricity and hot water, a composting toilet and channels to catch rainwater.”
See Ty’s website at SolTrekker.org or watch his SolTrekker Intro video (also embedded below) and see the Portland TV […]

It’s harvest time!
One of Boing Boing editor Mark Frauenfelder’s recent posts about organic home gardens, War Vegetable Gardening, starts with the following review of a classic book with the same title and continues with an excerpt from the book.
“Daniel Bowman Simon of The Who Farm sent me a link to this scanned book: War Vegetable […]

VaPooRizer.Com
Front page Digg item about a new garbage treatment plant that uses plasma to vaporize trash while generating energy.
But where does the poo go?
Excerpt from the inhabitat story linked from Digg:
“Recently St. Lucie County in Florida announced that it has teamed up with Geoplasma to develop the United States’ first plasma gasification plant.
The plant will […]

After reading an article about a new Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) initiative, I thought back to the off-grid Seasteading project, started by one of PayPal’s founders.
In their new book in progress, Seasteading: A Practical Guide to Homesteading the High Seas, by Patri Friedman, Wayne Gramlich, and Andrew House, under a section called “Technological […]

Electricity can make crystals and other materials expand or contract. This is called the piezoelectric effect. I was thinking of that while discussing an idea for “software defined corrective lenses” with J. Neil Schulman recently, and he thought it was worth looking into.
Neil googled terms such as “programmable eyeglasses” and came up with futurist forecasts […]

You can greatly exceed the $1 per watt price of new wind power systems by building your own homebrew wind turbine generator. [Update: I really meant that you can get the same value for a fraction of the price, but you probably understood that anyway. Typical small scale retail systems are more like $4 per […]

Great photos from the opening of Josh Tickell’s award winning documentary film, Fuel, may be seen at The Fuel Film website. The FAQ page introduces a variety of alternative energy methods and their advantages.
The trailer for Fuel’s previous incarnation as Fields of Fuel is no longer available, but unless I’m misunderemembering, the new one takes […]

Professor Marc A. Baldo in video in which he explains a new window building material that is tolerant of defects (unlike today’s photovoltaic cells), should be inexpensive to make, and is expected to double the efficiency of solar electric systems because it concentrates sunlight at any angle towards its edges, thus does not need sun […]

I inherited a “Huffy” bicycle about as rusty as my riding skills, and the rear tire is flat. Otherwise, it seems sturdy enough to carry my weight and has convenient storage that easily fits a six pack. Which of course would only be for green tea or something eco friendly.
Instead of America’s nouveau poor going […]

In an email message titled “watch the two videos,” Geo. McCalip wrote:
“The Algae Bioreactor Video and the HDVG Video are about 2/3 of the way down the page.”
“http://www.valcent.net/s/Home.asp”
This Google Video of a 22 minute Bloomberg interview with the Valcent founder back in June might be more accessible to various media players.

The vertical growth bioreactors […]

If you have “attention surplus disorder,” watch one of my favorite authors, Neal Stephenson, discuss his new novel, Anathem, and his earlier work in this YouTube video of a Google Talk he gave in September.
From the YouTube video description:
“Fraa Erasmas is a young avout living in the Concent of Saunt Edhar, a sanctuary for […]

While following a link about growing your own chicken feed at A Homesteading Neophyte blog, I found a reference to Backyard Poultry Mag in the comments.
The latest issue caught my eye with an article titled “One Dozen Tips and Tricks to Simplify Poultry Keeping” by Gail Damerow, with information about things to do for the […]

A Kurzweil AI report (with photo) of an article from New Hampshire’s Union Leader tells of Segway (and more successful projects) inventor Dean Kamen’s new role in automobile manufacturing.
The Stirling cycle is an external combustion design, has safety, efficiency, and energy source flexibility advantages over traditional internal combustion engines. Stirlings aren’t as susceptible to altitude […]

The “raw solar” MIT project based on Washington state inventor Doug Wood’s designs has a revamped website and is moving forward with commercial deployment.
From their FAQ page:
“Because of the simplicity of the design, and use of widely available materials, the dish has a huge potential to address the energy problems of the rapidly developing third […]

Flies came in and transformed orange peels on waste lands over time, replacing invasive grass species and weeds with a lush forest rich in biodiversity. Daniel Janzen’s approach cost $3,000 per episode compared to $600,000 spent doing the same work with human labor and tractors. After orange juice is squeezed and oil from the skin […]

Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder linked to a Marijuana Policy Project chart showing that 9 out of 10 marijuana decriminalization initiatives passed across the nation. The prison guards in California caused the only defeat, of Prop 5.
“Proposition 5: Expand the number of drug offenders diverted from prison into treatment and decriminalize the possession of up to […]

An article at TreeHugger about bamboo sheets (and socks) was brought to my attention after reading that bamboo sheets and towels were required for LEED certification of sustainable hotels. Bamboo has natural antibacterial and antifungal properties, thus requires no pesticides when grown.
“A quantitative antibacterial capability test was performed by the China Industrial Testing Center (CTITC) […]

Press coverage by The Auto Channel of the Santa Monica Alt Car Expo 2008. For city folk, plug-in hybrids are the most promising new technology concept. Battery chemistry is still under development with no clear winner yet for the standard energy storage solution. From the YouTube video description:
“Southern California Edison is doing things with wind, […]

Geo. McCalip’s True American Century is a counter-neocon site with good energy and environmental positions and a plan to reduce our incarceration rate to the lowest in the world. The prison guard union isn’t going to like that!
The good ol’ neocons would have us shocking and awing forever to cement the world order for a […]

An AP news item at Philly.com that I saw linked from Fark (!) has the headline “Energy hogs: prisons now recycle, grow own food.”
Excerpt:
“LITTLEROCK, Wash. - Of all the things convicted murderer Robert Knowles has been called during his 13 years behind bars, recycler hasn’t been one of them.”
“But there he was one morning, pitchfork […]

Stefan Molyneux speech from 2006 with a libertarian take on pollution, energy and the like.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j27XJ0vjr0Y

While looking for a Halloween themed drawing of Ayn Rand on a broom to scare you about the economic mess, I came across the news that Mises scholar Larry Sechrest died October 30.
Jeffrey Tucker wrote:
“Our dear friend Larry Sechrest, professor of economics at Sul Ross University, and a long-time writer and speaker for economic liberty, […]