PermaKent Permaculture Ideas of J. Kent Hastings

Another food contamination scare is in the news–this time it’s pistachio nuts. Wikipedia describes the heart health benefits of pistachios.
“One or two handfuls of the nuts can make a big enough difference to lower the risk of heart disease, say scientists. Volunteers who ate three ounces of pistachios a day for one month lowered their […]

The Simpsons MovieAbby Cohn at Berkeley Innovations describes a test by the City of San Francisco to convert brown grease, which normally plugs up sewer pipes, into biodiesel in an item titled From Bacon To Biofuel.
Innovations is the website of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering, hence the plugs for its alumni in the article.
” […]

You might expect Mound-Day items to appear on Monday, but who says I’m tied to your planet’s orbital idiosyncrasies, Earthling?
An excerpt from a Chicago Tribune story last week about Michelle Obama’s kitchen garden:
“Friday’s activities are the culmination of a campaign to turn the 16 acres of White House grounds into an ‘edible landscape’. ”
This kind […]

The Albany Democrat-Herald in Oregon published a story about Grease Lightning Delivery, a business that uses biodiesel and recycled vegetable oil as fuel.
“John Knox thinks his 1982 Mazda Truck with a modified engine that runs on biofuel can provide businesses with an economical and environmentally sound means of delivery.”
Small scale recycling of waste vegetable oil […]

Windpower in Iran
This headline was the title for my side of a debate (in the negative) on “Should the U.S. invade Iran” held at the Karl Hess Club on Monday, March 16. (Also, Jerome Tuccille’s humorous book, It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand, featured stories about the founding personalities of the modern libertarian movement.)
The gist […]

“They Sow the Wind, and Reap the Whirlwind”
– Hosea 8:1-14
There are some of you who held down steady jobs or ran businesses, paid your mortgage, invested in America and raised a family. Now you’re unemployed, your retirement investments went bust and your kids will live at home forever because their college money vanished too. Fools! […]

BBC News website’s Environment correspondent, Richard Black, reported an example of a bleak world situation, where “For nearly one billion people, clean drinking water is still a mirage,” in an article titled “Where clean water is a pipedream”.
If you want a graphic demonstration of the health impacts of poor drinking water, look no further than […]

Crustacean publicity still,
courtesy of Irena Belle Films.
When I was cast as the bearded fat lady in Crustacean, the horror-comedy movie I’m editing, I thought it might be amusing to run a photo of me in a dress with a satirical Prop 108 [Update: I meant Prop 8] post about how “the fags are ruining marriage.” […]