tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49549833686430866862021-08-17T02:59:03.100-07:00David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.comBlogger406125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-83473398769883860532012-06-21T15:45:00.003-07:002012-06-21T15:45:32.972-07:00

This isn't good news that was just sent by an NY Times News Alert: Moody’s Cuts Credit Ratings of 15 Big BanksMoody’s Investors Service has lowered the ratings of some of the world’s largest banks, including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.The ratings agency said late Thursday that the banks were downgraded because their long-term prospects for profitability and

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-59766789603306615232012-06-17T14:49:00.002-07:002012-06-17T14:49:43.856-07:00

One of the complaints about modern times is how the technology, and architecture of cities, gets in the way of the humans finding each other.  We can drive a 100 miles in the blink of an eye, travel to the other side of the planet in a day of air travel, but do we know our neighbors?  Those people who live next door, and are always trimming trees in the yard, what are their interests, their

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-11937311904815426452012-05-28T14:53:00.000-07:002012-05-28T14:53:06.870-07:00

Budweiser, really, is this the best way to save a significant amount of water?  Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Budweiser, proved recently the company should probably lay off drinking so much of its product, when the marketing department sent out a press release urging men to "Grow One, Save a Million".  The gimmick (beyond the near-pornographic headline) is to save water by growing a

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-71549045660608653992012-05-12T18:22:00.001-07:002012-05-12T18:22:45.424-07:00

These salsa containers will be used once then thrown away to sit undecomposing on a landfill for a couple hundred years. Is that right?? It's really goofy from my perspective. The alternatives are 1)) we bring the things home to drop in recycling bin. 2)) the restaurant uses compostable alternates, or reusable washable things.

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-41933297774814460792012-04-27T23:34:00.000-07:002012-04-27T23:34:07.273-07:00

What do you do if your city turns into a burned out husk of its former glory, abandoned buildings for miles upon miles, etc?  This is happening in several cities around the world.  Former hubs of massive commerce and industry, turn into crapped out urban blight when the tides of corporate success change.  I have an amazing movie to recommend that takes a close look at one of these cities,

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-68127625456658752842012-03-10T19:48:00.000-08:002012-03-10T19:48:03.898-08:00

The following is an amazing video of a group of people in Seattle experimenting with reviving sailboats for commerce within Puget Sound. Prior to powered boats, there was zillions of sail powered ships ferrying stuff back and forth across Puget Sound, but today there are highways and trucks and large ferry boats and bridges and other paraphernalia of the modern transportation infrastructure.

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-62285082116919459662012-03-01T09:41:00.001-08:002012-03-01T09:41:31.143-08:00

I saw the interesting juxtaposition of tweets below that appeared side-by-side in my twitter machine.  The first tweet is a "Food Safety" concern.  Generally, finding poisons like Arsenic in food is a big concern, that is currently known as "Food Safety", which has to do with various chemicals that find their way into the food we eat.  The second tweet is a simple reminder that gardening season

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-86192792267508546242012-01-20T09:49:00.001-08:002012-01-20T09:53:56.332-08:00

A rash of tree murders have popped up in my neighborhood. Trees, 6 feet or so tall, primarily of pine ethnicity, cut down in the prime of life, reportedly the corpses are put on display for bizarre rituals while the tree carcasses are still fresh, and then the dead trees are dumped unceremoniously on the street where cleanup crews have to work extra shifts to clean up the carnage. We hear

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0Monta Loma Mountain View37.405631 -122.094418tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-56271478621376848302012-01-19T21:26:00.000-08:002012-01-19T21:26:34.674-08:00

Another Rocket Stove video, this time with a little design tweak. The best rocket stove design just got better! Airflow was an issue with the original #10 can rocket stove design. I cut some two inch wide "flaps" and pushed them over the top of the rocket stove. This helps keep the top on and allows great airflow. Now the rocket stove is really rockin'.

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-23251177939325168552012-01-19T21:21:00.000-08:002012-01-19T21:21:43.469-08:00

Here's another Rocket Stove video, this time showing how to make one with bricks rather than used coffee cans. Dr. Larry Winiarski makes a clean burning rocket stove using 16 adobe bricks at the Rotary International-sponsored Integrated Cooking Workshop in Tlautla, Mexico

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-31048889269569518262012-01-19T21:16:00.000-08:002012-01-19T21:16:37.934-08:00

I'm not sure what a Rocket Stove is or what is their advantage.  I understand that it has something to do with efficient fuel usage.  In any case the following video is interesting. Build a Rocket Stove Step-by-Step. Building a rocket stove is quick and easy. You will need one #10 can and four small cans (soup, corn, beans, etc.). Seeing how to build a rocket stove is much easier then

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-9383873549353181972012-01-18T22:14:00.000-08:002012-01-18T22:14:50.017-08:00

Out here in the Western U.S. we have an issue with little amounts of rain.  In Northern California we kind of ignore the real effect of the lack of rain, and continue growing lawns with grass as if we lived out east where it rains all the time.  Regular grass just doesn't make ecological sense here because we don't get rain for most of the year.  Most years the rain starts around November and

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-14978181722201384642012-01-18T21:32:00.000-08:002012-01-18T22:15:35.679-08:00

Who am I, a guy that hasn't owned a television in over 15 years, to tell y'all how to handle your television watching habits.  eh?  Don't answer that and listen to the story ... In the most recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts the guy started off by saying that he and his family had "cleared some of the backlog on their DVR" and watched some particular TV show he wanted to talk about

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-38677864390130093692012-01-18T12:15:00.000-08:002012-01-18T12:15:23.663-08:00

The humble shovel has existed in one form or another for thousands of years.  This means it is a very successful design that you might think cannot be improved upon.  But ...

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-6277950664055074332012-01-18T10:53:00.000-08:002012-01-18T11:00:13.210-08:00

In the game of decreasing the atmospheric carbon levels thought to be a main culprit in global warming, one effort underway is to grow plants in an effort to sequester the atmospheric carbon.  Basically plants breath in CO2 and breath out O2, meaning the carbon stays in the plant.  Generally speaking there is a harmonic balance between plants and animals where animals breath out CO2, plants

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-18923864045038555512012-01-15T20:04:00.000-08:002012-01-15T20:04:34.409-08:00

A nice introduction to Permaculture that's also an overview of the Permaculture Congress held in Brazil a few years ago that's also nice examples of Permaculture operations in practice.  For example a tour of collecting the feces from pigs and sheep into a pond, that goes into a biodigester, to produce natural gas, that runs a turbine to generate electricity, and the effluent from the

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-53170758026731465272012-01-14T12:31:00.000-08:002012-01-14T13:02:04.650-08:00

A dream about genetically modified livestock just woke me, and the events in the dream was so haunting I had to come to the computer at 3AM to write.  In the dream some farmers were talking about whether the genetics license agreement under which they bought their pigs would allow them to breed pigs they'd bought, and then sell the pigs they'd bred.  Breeding livestock is a normal every-day

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-1533376534914054512012-01-11T13:24:00.000-08:002012-01-11T13:24:03.500-08:00

I'm reading this article on the NY Times website, With Work Scarce in Athens, Greeks Go Back to the Land, and it's making be think of the meltdown in Cuba and as well makes me think of the prediction many are making of a societal collapse from one or more of a variety of causes:  stresses induced from climate change, stresses induced from peak oil, or stresses induced from inability of the

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-4489446381672941512012-01-10T17:04:00.001-08:002012-01-10T17:04:28.193-08:00

Near where I live in Mountain View is this empty lot surrounded by a chain link fence. It formerly housed a small strip shopping center that had a single business selling specialty ethnic food. Here in Silicon Valley we have lots of ethnicities to serve and by all reports this store was very popular for its community. But the developer wanted to put the land to other uses and razed the building

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-29217486527489037792011-12-26T21:28:00.001-08:002011-12-26T21:28:04.643-08:00

In the past a farmer would buy a cow or two, have milk for his family, and sell any excess to neighbors.  This tradition is under attack from the FDA because of raw milk scares and the supposed urgency to pasteurize everything. There are a couple risks here.  First, many people see many health benefits from raw milk.  When treated and handled correctly raw milk is safe.  But the FDA knows

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-35124505007240494842011-12-10T08:36:00.001-08:002011-12-10T08:36:40.701-08:00

The Dilbert comic strip does such an excellent job of capturing the essential despair of working in modern corporations. The modern corporation is built in a top-down hierarchy, boss-men at the top (usually the boss-men are actually men) working through layers of captains and lieutenants, whose job titles are "Director" or "Manager", to dictate what the company does.  This leaves the people at

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-45366076457962559022011-12-04T14:38:00.001-08:002011-12-04T14:40:39.289-08:00

Do you eat food?  Do you eat food every day?  I'm sure you probably do, or you wouldn't be reading these words.  Perhaps you're aware that the quality of your food is important to your health.  After all your body is built out of the nutrients in the food you eat.  What you may not know is the corporatized globalized homogenized pasteurized agriculture system that gives us the food in the

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-24324833058635218242011-12-02T09:02:00.001-08:002011-12-02T09:02:02.260-08:00

NPR ran a nice story this morning about the obesity epidemic and a movement to ask Businesses to provide us with different, healthier, food choices.  To an extent the obesity epidemic is about food choices, supposedly, maybe, and just as supposedly different healthier food choices will decrease obesity.  Of course the modern food system is rife with ridiculous food-like substances and we as a

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-12179556060023929692011-12-02T08:09:00.001-08:002011-12-02T08:09:37.983-08:00

Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles -- researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. Call it distributed DIY. And the results? Delicious. To find out more about the project:  http://

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4954983368643086686.post-37043335294112402692011-11-30T14:20:00.001-08:002011-11-30T14:21:30.093-08:00

Transition Primer US v2.0 (function() { var scribd = document.createElement("script"); scribd.type = "text/javascript"; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = "http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();

David Herronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14564128110588027532noreply@blogger.com0