This Kurzweil AI article quotes author Richard Dooling’s description of his appearance topics on Coast To Coast AM:
“. . .how a wizard, an atomic physicist, and the Unabomber predicted the Wall Street debacle.”
Kurzweil AI also describes Dooling’s latest book:
“Rapture For the Geeks is a witty, fun, fast-paced, and very readable romp through the latest […]
Josh Tickell’s movie, Fields of Fuel, which promotes biodiesel over petroleum based fuel, won the audience prize at Sundance 2008 for the Best Documentary. The cast list includes Barbara Boxer, Richard Branson, Sheryl Crow, Laurie David, Larry David, James Gennaro, Larry Hagman, Woody Harrelson, Jay Inslee, Jack Johnson, Bud McFarlane, Willie Nelson, Director Josh Tickell, […]
The neocon war blog China Confidential takes the Obama-Biden campaign to task for pushing “biodiesel baloney.”
“. . .biofuels are so menacing that opposition to their use cuts across political and ideological lines to an astonishing extent–from Cuba’s Communist leader, Fidel Castro, to America’s libertarian Cato Institute and conservative Heritage Foundation.”
“But Barack Obama apparently sees the […]
From YouTube Description:
“Google is already investing $10 million into its RechargeIT plug-in vehicle program,and plans to make investments into green cars this summer through the plug-in program. The Google RechargeIT team also made this short video clip to explain what their 7-week drive test was all about.”
Some of my friends are tired of me bitching about city life, telling me how they’re there for “social” reasons. Yeah. Too bad they can’t tell me their neighbors’ names on either side of their house or across the street.
My neighbor in Pahrump, a small town 70 miles from Vegas, is “Dan.” I chat with […]
Watching satellite HD channels on an off-grid homestead without a handy bowl of freshly popped snack food seems like a serious human rights violation to me.
That horrifying snackless scenario prompted some serious research. Is there a practical alternative to driving to the store for that vital popcorn? Or can we just grow it ourselves?
After laboriously […]
In an editorial in the latest issue of Backwoods Home Magazine online, editor and publisher Dave Duffy was surprised by the following admission by a board member of the MREA Midwest Renewable Energy Fair:
“He [MREA Fair’s Mick Sagrillo] said the Board meeting to ban BHM did occur (he was at it), but that it was […]
The Domestic Fuel article, “World’s Biggest Camelina Grower Fueling Biodiesel Production,” has much to say about the virtues of Camelina. Here is just one of them:
“Camelina does not take away from land currently being utilized for food production because it has the ability to grow on marginal land utilizing very little moisture.”
A recent BioDiesel Magazine article announced that researcher Zhiyou Wen, “assistant professor of biological engineering systems at Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,” has converted biodiesel byproduct “crude glycerin” into Omega-3 fatty acids using microalgae.
“After the fatty acids are produced, the algae can be used as animal feed. The animals are then consumed […]
“Why Changing Your Lightbulbs Doesn’t Matter,” a rant at EcoGeek by Hank Green, is also a front page item at Digg.
Internet sensation Hank Green’s personal site is more interesting than the usual boring resume page. And it links to his YouTube channel, where you can see proof of his sensationhood:
A commenter at Digg cited a […]
Cleantechnica article reports a big deployment of solar systems in San Francisco by a group called 1BOG.
1BOG, “one block off grid,” is a “community solar initiative” program that allows neighbors to sign up to get solar equipment with subsidy, using their chosen systems provider, Real Goods Solar.
The group is working in several locations outside […]
In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore said he grew tobacco among other crops on the family farm in Carthage, Tennessee during summer vacations in his youth. Gore also likened what he views as today’s suppression of global warming evidence by Big Oil to the cover up long ago by Big Tobacco of the health risks […]
Louise Meyer and Patricia McArdle of Solar Household Energy, Inc. and the resource site SolarCooking.org, demonstrate several solar ovens, ranging from shaped trash cardboard covered with foil (cheap, effective, but not durable), one used in Afghanistan that sells for about $25, to an elegant origami folded aluminum product that will last forever. Solar ovens might […]
The folks at Project Off The Grid have a new video at their greatly improved website describing their off-grid community project in South Dakota. They also seem to share my enthusiasm for Ryan Is Hungry YouTube videos, like this one about Keith Thompson a.k.a. “Skeeter” and his off-grid homestead.
Patrick Stanton asked me about root cellar requirements in an email message.
“I had a technical self-reliance question that you could address on the blog, MLL list, or directly: What are the requirements of a root cellar? We have a dirt floor, brick walled basement, but what alterations would be needed to store food through the […]
Last Thursday, Al Gore challenged the U.S. to stop using fossil fuels in ten years. He discussed his plan and the reactions to it Sunday on Meet The Press.
Wind power may be viewed as an indirect form of solar energy moving the atmosphere, but megawatt production (like the Pickens Plan) is restricted to select wind […]
Readers have asked (via email) for an off-grid-friendly fuel making how-to article.
A process that looks simple is found at kitchen-biodiesel.com. The “Automatic Alternative” shown below the animation is one of their sponsor’s systems.
Don’t take the abbreviated animated GIF thumbnail I made from images there as the whole process. Make sure to actually visit their site […]
Cassava is “Africa’s Food Security Crop” according to the World Bank.
A CNN report about Nigerian civil engineer, Dr Joseph Adelegan, and his projects to convert waste into useful commodities, describes his latest idea to recover energy from cassava processing waste, which in the past would be dumped untreated to pollute local water supplies.
Through innovative biogas […]
Ilex over at Homesteading In A Condo thinks the non-locavore 18 course meal served to the ruling class at the G8 Summit meeting July 7, while discussing the global food crisis, was a bit, uh. I think it’s a lot uh!
A handful of uncooked rice might have been more appropriate.
You’ve got to see the […]
A new project that seems at first blush to be Hobbiton Meets Starship Troopers (because its founding leaders are veterans) is the formation of an off-grid community designed to provide mutual aid and support with a “family values” emphasis.
The founders already have 100s of acres to start, from the 419 area code on the site […]
This remains my favorite of the TED talks (except maybe Ray Kurzweil).
William McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, discusses sustainable design in architecture and ends with his astounding plans for twelve new cities in China. Quite a contrast from the toxic hell that is Beijing. From Wikipedia:
Air pollution […]
Just because PETA drives me crazy, don’t think I hate vegetarians. The Path To Freedom family in the video is a model for everyone.
I’m all for Food Not Lawns, Edible Estates, and Urban Homesteading if you’ve already got a house in the ‘burbs. My only quibble is that for renters looking to buy a […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
J. Kent Hastings
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