Archive for the 'Freedom' Category

Permaculture in Nir Moshe Village, Israel

Sunday, August 17th, 2008

Adamama, according to their web site, was founded in 2003 “for adopting ways of sustainable lifestyle, agriculture and recycling, and as a place for finding the balance between man and nature.”
And here’s an excerpt from a Haaretz article about “an anarchist group” in Nir Moshe.
“The journey began with a visit to Nir Moshe, where a […]

The People of Sand and Slag

Monday, August 11th, 2008

There may come a day when unspoiled natural scenery has no connection to our physical health, due to insanely high-tech medicine. But what kind of world would it be?
The author Paolo Bacigalupi said in a great interview about his career at the Mumpsimus blog, “With “Sand and Slag”, I had a beef with an old […]

Totally Off-Grid in New Mexico

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

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.

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Raw Solar: MIT Solar Collector Breakthrough

Monday, July 21st, 2008

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 […]

Make Biodiesel In Your Kitchen

Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

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 […]

18-Course G8 Summit’s Food Crisis Menu

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

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 […]

Homesteading: Cabin In The Trees

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

kabri over at the Forest and Farm adventures blog, writes about homesteading on forest land, with plenty o’ pictures.
The July 8th post includes the image of their cabin in the trees (cropped here in reduced thumbnail):
When we first bought our forest land, we tried camping in our trailer. The trouble with that was - we […]

Off-Grid, Non-Electric Refrigeration

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

A recent post at the T’a’grarial blog shows a TED talk video of Adam Grosser describing a new, improved version of a product from 1928 providing 24 hours of safe non-electric refrigeration from a device the size of a thermos using just one hour of cooking heat available anywhere in the world.

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Ron Paul Forums: “Project Off The Grid”

Monday, July 7th, 2008

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 […]

Urban Expatriate’s “Ideal Country Home”

Sunday, July 6th, 2008

Gene GeRue’s Ruralize.com website promotes the homesteading author’s book, How to Find Your Ideal Country Home: A Comprehensive Guide.
Until urban centers in the U.S. become something other than crime-riddled, polluted cesspools of disease and poverty, I’m taking the rural side of the debate. Although I’m on five acres in Pahrump at the moment, I have […]

Admirable Vegetarian Urban Homesteaders

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

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 […]

PETA’s Pathetic Fallacy

Monday, June 30th, 2008

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 […]

PETA for Pesticides?

Monday, June 30th, 2008

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? […]

Birth of the “Virtual Book Tour”

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

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 […]

RepRap: “Wealth Without Money” Milestone

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

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 […]

Boing Boing Editor’s “Vegetative State”

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

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 […]

Revolutionary: “The Most Calories For The Least Work”

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

A Homesteading Today thread begins with a post by the self-described “Revolutionary” Ernie, who says:
Gardening is hard work. It’s backbreaking, sweaty, blistering, and monotonous. While I love the alchemy of turning soil, sunshine, and water into calories for my family, I would much rather sit in the shade underneath the old maples and fritter away […]

The Seasteading Institute (direct link)

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

Here’s a direct link to The Seasteading Institute.
I neglected to include in my previous blog post.
(It was in a draft, but the wrong version got published.)
There’s an Introduction To Seasteading section and a “Captain’s Blog”.

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“Seasteading” Colony To Be Off-Grid and Offshore

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

Paypal founder Peter Thiel is funding The Seasteading Institute to investigate the legal and technical advantages of living offshore in off-grid artificial habitats.
It might sound like the setting for the videogame Bioshock, but the institute isn’t playing around: It plans to splash a prototype into the San Francisco Bay within the next two years, the […]

The Great Housing Swindle

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

Off-Grid tells the story of Steve James and his battle to keep a planning commission from seizing his off-grid home. The Register’s description of the software designer who built his own design for a straw and timber off-grid house is a “cheap and cheerful Scottish ecogaff.”
According to The Register:
A 52-year-old software engineer has built a […]

On Guerrilla Gardening

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

Richard Reynolds, who appeared in a recent Current TV Guerrilla Gardening video, has a book on the subject available May 27 with a pre-order discount.
 
 
  
 ctv

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WiMax to Bring Free Phone and Internet Service?

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

Kurzweil AI describes near term WiMax deployment that should have an impact on off-grid phone and internet users. It may bring about free ad-supported phone and internet service such as a theoretical Google “Gphone.” The linked PhysOrg article reports:
WiMAX quickly moves large amounts of digital data such as video or picture files across kilometers, as […]

UK Guerrilla Gardening on Current TV

Friday, May 9th, 2008

Site for worldwide guerrilla gardening featured on video from Current TV about an action taken in the UK to enhance neglected public landscape.

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Could STEED Gallop To Victory?

Monday, April 28th, 2008

STEED stands for Social Security, Taxes, Energy, Education, and Defense. I came up with the acronym by adding Energy to TEDS, which was the rallying cry of some Nevada Libertarian Republicans whose meeting I stumbled into once. Never heard of TEDS? You’re not alone.
Naturally, the media is covering more important issues like Mindy McCready […]

BSL at KHC on WFB, ACC, and RWR

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

Although Brad Linaweaver is an agnostic libertarian science fiction Hollywood screenwriter who, except for a brief period following 9-11, has opposed U.S. military adventurism most of his life. Brad nonetheless maintained a correspondence and friendship with Catholic conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. for over thirty years.
WFB turned against the current neocon adventure in Iraq […]

Duke of Al

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

So I wasn’t imagining things, Al Gore really did say a tax on carbon should replace the employment tax. Maybe he could get together with Pat Buchanan since the number one CO2 emitter is now China, and thus part of the carbon tax could be viewed as a tariff.
Here’s the story, “Al Gore’s Pollution Tax […]

Interesting Tax Proposal By Al Gore?

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

In this recent TED talk, speaker Al Gore wonders what he could say to promote a greater sense of urgency about the climate crisis. I don’t have an answer about that, but in order to get political action in his direction, he might talk more about the tax change I think he proposed in this […]

Review of John Berlau’s Eco-Freaks

Monday, April 14th, 2008

If true, I could support Eco-Freaks author John Berlau’s claims against anti-dam construction protesters, as he wrote about them in National Review online back in 2005. A few environmentalist groups seemingly contributed to the catastrophic loss of New Orleans and other cities during hurricanes Katrina and Rita by opposing the necessary building of levees and […]

Pangea Day France Sings U.S. Anthem

Monday, April 14th, 2008

TED curator, Chris Anderson, sent several links from TED.com about the upcoming Pangea Day, including an inspiring performance by French singers of the U.S. national anthem:

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“Most Sustainable” Cuba May Not Be Utopia

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

The most sustainable place on Earth may not seem like utopia to its subjects, despite some recent welcome reforms.
According to Alvaro Vargas Llosa, author and syndicated columnist, in an article titled “The World’s Bravest Blogger”:
The Cuban government has finally blocked access to a Web log written by Yoani Sanchez, a young woman who has caused […]