This just in! (That’s what she said.) This Boing Boing post points out a New Scientist report titled “Horny goat weed could be better than Viagra.”
“Viagra’s active compound, sildenafil, works by inhibiting an enzyme called phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5). Because PDE5 helps control blood flow to the penis, inhibiting PDE5 promotes male erection.”
“Dell’Agli and his colleagues tested […]
Seasteaders beware. Today there be more pirates afloat.
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 […]
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 […]
Video report on Veracifier’s YouTube channel:
“This incident ended a day that saw multiple pre-RNC raids, which some legal observers believe is a coordinated pre-emptive effort by local and national law enforcement agencies to chill RNC protest action.”
Dr. Joe O’Neill’s talk was well attended and well received at the August 18 meeting of the Karl Hess Club, held at Dinah’s restaurant on Sepulveda.
As you might expect, Dr. O’Neill covered the language of Big Brother justifying security cameras everywhere and useful war propaganda terms such as “pacification.” While shared media culture seems to […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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? […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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”.
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 […]
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 […]
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
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 […]
Site for worldwide guerrilla gardening featured on video from Current TV about an action taken in the UK to enhance neglected public landscape.
J. Kent Hastings
Record Your Own
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