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 […]
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 […]
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 co-author of the permaculture design title Edible Forest Gardens (2 volume set), Ed Toensmeier, has a new book out called Perennial Vegetables.
The publisher, Chelsea Green, describes it further in the subtitle:
From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-Grow Edibles
Cindy Dyer of the Garden Muse blog photographed Toensmeier receiving an […]
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”.
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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 […]
Digg links to an article at Remedicated.com about “20 Common Cooking Ingredients That Act As Medicines”.
Find out what turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, garlic, rosemary, honey, chili peppers, olive oil, rice, parsley, onions (and related plants such as chives, shallots, and leeks), lemon, mustard, cloves, apples, kale, licorice, peppermint, horseradish, and avocado can do for you besides […]
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 […]
Grow Your Own Pharmacy by Linda Gray, published last year by Findhorn Press, describes in detail the nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and other herbal compounds in various plants. The first chapters cover “Ingredients For A Healthy Body” and “Introduction to Gardening.”
The book gives some history, the conditions and methods of sowing each plant and […]
It’s not quite “Mr. Fusion” as seen at the end of Back To The Future, but EFuel100 does let you pour beer into a distiller that also serves as an ethanol fuel pump.
The cost for processing discarded liquor can run as low as $0.10 per gallon of ethanol produced. A typical bar or restaurant discards […]
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 […]
Kurzweil AI describes a surge in the supply of silicon, reported by Technology Review that by itself could make existing solar panel designs cost competitive to electricity rates from our not so beloved grid.
“In areas that get a lot of sun, that will translate to solar electricity costs of about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, […]
A few months ago, John Laumer wrote about Survivalist Green for TreeHugger.
The most prominent face of Survivalist Green is that of the city dweller; the second is of the suburban or exurban dweller. (Covers everything from apartments along the rail line to Mega-Mansions in the exurb zone.)
The third face of SG extends to the house […]
Green Wombat describes former Australian Greenpeace activist Danny Kennedy’s new California venture, Sungevity:
“Putting photovoltaic panels on residential rooftops remains largely a labor-intensive cottage business, often involving multiple visits to a client’s home to make the sales pitch, measure the roof, and design a custom system. Sungevity, which officially launches Tuesday on Earth Day, takes all […]
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 […]
The Independent describes a version of a Food Not Lawns/Edible Estates-ish organization in the UK.
Twelve months on and Food Up Front is now signing up people for year two. It has a network of more than 30 street rep co-ordinators, and has attracted the interest of would-be urban farmers from neighbouring boroughs and beyond.
Sphere: Related […]
BBC article in a series of reports about the global food price crisis. Seems the U.N. is promoting permaculture, if not using that word exactly.
The Unesco study recommends better safeguards to protect resources and more sustainable farming practices, such as producing food locally.
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Browsing recent bookmarks at del.icio.us led me to a series about Utopias in Forbes.com, including an interesting article called “Ecotopia”. The author is not as skeptical about the anti-capitalist lifestyle as you might expect from a business journal.
And despite the new commune members’ reliance on local barter and low-tech sustainable gardening, the use of satellite […]
A popular TreeHugger story reports that carbon neutral biodiesel fuel can be grown from trees. Biodiesel burns cleaner than petrodiesel.
. . .the Brazilian Copaifera langsdorfii, to use its botanical name, can be tapped not unlike a rubber tree, but instead of yielding rubbery latex it gives up a natural diesel. According to the nurseryman selling […]
The Atlasphere has a column by teacher union and environmentalist bête noire, John Stossel, about a recent court decision against homeschoolers “even though,” Stossel writes, “home- schooled kids routinely outperform government- schooled kids academically.”
An attack by the state education establishment against individuals with legitimate concerns about child safety and indoctrination with poisonous worldviews should not […]
Digg links to a Tree Hugger story about a water pump system that doubles as a Merri-Go-Round for kids. The YouTube video is from the PlayPumps manufacturer’s site.
(Not an April Fool’s Day joke.)
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Rolex Award description of an effective earthenware method of keeping food and medicine cool in the Nigerian (and any other) desert. It is called a zeer in Arabic.
The impact of the pot-in-pot on individuals’ lives is overwhelming. “Farmers are now able to sell on demand rather than ‘rush sell’ because of spoilage,” says Abba, “and […]
One of these days, after I get the transportation challenge figured out, it will be me explaining my first year off the grid. Until then, you’ll just have to get Doug Fine’s book, Farewell, My Subaru. Thanks, Boing Boing TV!
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Popular Science [Update: I meant Popular Mechanics, sorry] reports startup company Konarka’s demonstration of a cheap film solar cell inkjet printing process.
Konarka Technologies, the Massachusetts-based company we first recognized with a 2005 Breakthrough Award for its affordable Power Plastic solar film, said this week that it has successfully manufactured those thin solar cells using an […]
Peak Oil paranoids party on about petroleum’s price pinnacle in this Digg link to a MarketWatch story reporting Goldman Sachs projection of $200 a barrel oil soon.
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Click image of the view of Earth from Apollo 8 over Rama’s interior to see a list of O’Neill cylinders and other space habitats.
The Story of Stuff, an entertaining video presentation, illustrates among many other concepts, the limitations of recycling. For every barrel you recycle, 70 barrels of waste were required in manufacturing the item. […]
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