Sean's shared items in Google Reader

The Farming Systems Trial (1981-2011)

2011-10-05T16:29:39Z

Metafilter reports that The Rodale Institute has just published the results of a 30-year study that claims that - in terms of yields, economic viability, energy usage, and human health - organic farming is better than conventional farming.

With results like these, why does conventional wisdom favour chemical farming? "Vested interests. Organic farming keeps more money on the farm and in rural communities and out of the pockets of chemical companies. As the major funders of research centres and universities, and major advertisers in the farm media, they effectively buy a pro-chemical bias."

Fels-Naptha

2011-09-27T14:40:31Z

Fels-Naptha is old school soap that works great when it comes to stains. I had a pair of khakis that I got old chain grease on, washed them regularly about 3-4 times. Regular wash didn't get the stain out, so I called it a bust. Then 3-months later I used a little elbow grease and Fels-Naptha, just rubbing the fabric against itself for 5 minutes, and sure enough, the grease came right out. The soap is good for plenty more as well.

-- Tanner

[After Tanner suggested Fels Naptha for getting bike grease out of a pair of Khakis, I tried it out on some grease stained pants and it worked perfectly. It does take a bit of effort, but the results are worth it. I also managed to get rid of some pesky collar stains.--OH]

Fels-Naptha
$4.20

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Fels-Naptha

Tiny House in a Landscape

2011-09-17T14:24:55Z

It is fun to see some of my close friends get involved with the tiny house movement. My college roommate who I had the privilege of going camping with in the High Sierra this last weekend just sent me a great photo from Norway. His mom is from Norway and he and his family have visited relatives over there in the last couple of years.

This photos is of some very cool little cliff houses that are right outside of Jøssingfjord in Norway.
Thanks Fred for sharing this with us. If you have a photo that might work for this feature please send it to tinyhouseblog (at) gmail.com.

Photo prise le 21 août 2010 (© Eivind K. Døvik / Flickr)

On a divisive dam, a snippy bit of graffiti

2011-09-23T21:54:00Z

"Anonymous activist artists recently painted a “cut here” scissor graphic on the obsolete 200 foot tall Matilija Dam near Ojai, California. As the LA Times reports, a coalition of environmentalists, surfers, fishermen, and government officials have been working for years to have the dam removed."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dam-scissors-20110919,0,947381.story
via Laughing Squid

Pendulum Waves

2011-09-16T16:02:00Z

Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion.

For more details see http://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k16940&pageid=icb.page80863&pageContentId=icb.pagecontent341734&view=view.do&viewParam_name=indepth.html#a_icb_pagecontent341734
Sent us this morning by Fig.

Take a Nap! Change Your Life

2011-09-16T16:52:09Z

Shared by Sean
Yup. Knew it.

Napping is a evolutionarily habit that still works wonders today. I can get by with several hours less sleep per night by adding a 20-minute nap in the afternoon. But I work at home where napping is easily done. The point of this book is to persuade you that the benefits of napping, scientifically derived, are so great you should do everything you can to make napping a habit whatever your schedule. As this concise guide makes clear the benefits to nappers are significant: smarter, more productive, healthier. For those who have tried napping without success, this book offers several different methods to try. It is hard to imagine the siesta returning in full force in the workplace, but it should be resurrected in some fashion. Start here. This is the best practical book on naps yet.

-- KK

Take a Nap! Change Your Life
Sara C. Mednick, Ph.D.
2006, 141 pages
$11

Available from Amazon

Sample Excerpts:

It's free, it's nontoxic and it has no dangerous side effects. Hard to believe, with these powerful selling points, that people have to be convinced to nap. But alas, for way too long, napping has been given a bad rap.

*

*

I'm often asked if a nap during the day will interfere with nocturnal sleep. The answer is a definite no. Unfortunately, many information sources on sleep hygiene encourage people to avoid napping if they're having trouble sleeping at night. Not only is there not a shred of evidence to support this advice, but much of the data coming out of sleep research demonstrates quite the opposite. In studies across all age ranges, nocturnal sleep duration has been proven to be unaffected by midday napping. As a matter of fact, studies indicate that in a number of cases napping actually improves the ability to sleep at night.

*
As a rule of thumb, you can count on naps earlier in the day to be richer in REM, while late afternoon naps tend to be higher in SWS. If you take particular interest in your dreams, waking up during or right after a heavy REM episode will allow you the greatest recall of your dream imagery. If you feel like one of "the walking tired," a heavy SWS does will take care of that.

It bears repeating: There's no such thing as a bad nap. Any time you spend in midday sleep will reduce the effects of fatigue and bestow benefits. But our nap needs differ across populations and will change over the course of our lives. A mother's requirement is not the same as that of her three-year-old toddler. The sleep profile of a middle-aged football coach had little in common with that of a teenage beauty contestant.

"Who's got time to nap?" is a common complaint among non-nappers. The short answer is: just about everyone. if you spend 20 minutes or more at Starbucks getting an afternoon mocha latte, couldn't you just stay where you are and take a nap instead? So, before you conclude that napping doesn't fit into your busy life, take out your day planner and examine your schedule. By carefully reviewing the activities of your day and the time it takes to do them, you can assess which time expenditures are unnecessary and where a nap can be substituted. How long is your lunch? A paralegal with an hour lunch break reports that she can eat in half an hour and keep the second half for her nap. Or do what I do and pencil in 20 to 40 minutes as soon as your get home for a transition nap between work and leisure.

Once you've carved out these precious minutes, you need to make this nap time a regular feature of your day. Just as we've developed a detailed trail of cues for our minds and bodies to recognize that it's time for nighttime sleep, we need to fashion a similar set of cues that will indicate that it's nap time. Consistent scheduling allows the body to associate that hour with the nap and all other concerns to more easily fade away.

"If I nap I'm being lazy."

Some of the most hardworking figures in history--national leaders, scientists, CEOs, movie stars--have used napping as a tool to get more out of each day. As demonstrated by the latest brain imaging technology, your mind is still at work even if your body is at rest.

Replace with: "Napping makes me more productive."

"I'm too busy to nap."

Just look around your office at 3 p.m. More than likely, instead of a hive of industrious activity, you'll see a bunch of bleary-eyed workers checking and rechecking their e-mail. As the great napper Winston Churchill said, "Don't think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one… well, at least one and half." The latest scientific research has proven him correct.

Replace with: "I'm so busy, I need to nap."

"I haven't done enough to deserve a nap."

Do you deserve to eat? To breathe? No natural function--including napping!--should be regarded as a privilege. Stop cheating yourself.

Replace with: "I'm exercising my inalienable right to nap."

"I can't get anything out of a 20-minute nap, so why bother?"

You can reap benefits in as little as five minutes. Naps under 20 minutes can increase alertness, improve physical dexterity, boost stamina and lower stress. Post-lunch naps of 15 minutes have been shown in university studies to increase alertness and performance.

Tree Houses

2011-09-14T15:00:26Z

Tree houses are impractically romantic. There is no one book on how to make this recurring romance as practical as possible, but these two books by Peter Nelson contain the best suggestions and useful advice for building a real live-in tree house I’ve seen so far. The Treehouse Book has lots of fabulous examples in the US and a few chapters on how-to. His follow-up book, New Treehouses of the World, gathers inspirational examples from Thailand, New Zealand and other spots with tree-house culture, and has a short chapter on new tree-house technology. Main thing to remember when building a tree house is that trees move, over minutes and years. It’s closer to building a boat in the air. That's why there’s plenty ideas in these books for any small house, even those not arboreal.

-- KK

The Treehouse Book
Peter and Judy Nelson with David Larkin
2000, 224 pages
$20
Available from Amazon

Sample excerpts:

*

Sweet Birch -- A strong tree with shiny, waterproof bark that used to be stripped off for wintergreen or birch beer. Use in a group.

70' high -- spread 50'

**********************

New Treehouses of the World
Pete Nelson
2009, 223 pages
$25

Available from Amazon

Sample excerpts:

Trees in the northwest grow surprising quickly, so I prefer a GL (Garnier Limb) with a longer stem, the part of the GL that sticks out from the tree. While trees grow taller only at their tips, they grow in girth all long their length. As a tree puts on rings it envelops the GL, making the artificial limb even stronger. The tree will eventually push a beam out along the stem of the GL (the reason I prefer a longer stem) in much the same way the tree's roots might lift a heavy concrete sidewalk.

*

*

A "heavy limb," also designed by Greewood, holds up a bucket-style bracket attached to a large glue-laminated beam. There are numerous styles of artificial limbs, or tree anchor bolts (TABs).

*

An elegant platform takes shape around the old-growth Sitka spruce. Occasionally a tree will resist a building project, but this magnificent specimen remained calm and allowed us to proceed without protest.

Video: Free-Moving Kinect Used To Map Room And Objects In Detailed 3D | TechCrunch

2011-09-12T22:02:06Z

Shared by Sean
Best AR tech demo we've seen to-date. Phenomenal.

SURFMATTERS: Great Fun From 1965...

2011-09-07T05:01:48Z

FabFi: CNCed Wifi Antennae

2011-09-01T14:00:07Z

FabFi is an open-source, FabLab-grown system using common building materials and off-the-shelf electronics to transmit wireless ethernet signals across distances of up to several miles. With Fabfi, communities can build their own wireless networks to gain high-speed internet connectivity—thus enabling them to access online educational, medical, and other resources.

[Via Ponoko]

38th Ave Summer Swell 2011 - YouTube

2011-09-03T05:05:59Z

Godzilla's Feeling Mellow

2011-09-01T16:52:00Z

From yesterday's Bolinas Hearsay News. Original source unknown.

16 Year Old Builds Tiny Home

2011-08-31T14:49:40Z

Austin Hay from Santa Rosa, California is making the news these days. About a month ago he was featured in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. His latest forage into the public eye is a faircompanies.com video by Kirsten Dirksen. Which after just two days has had over 136,000 views.

I had the opportunity to meet Austin a couple of months ago at one of Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed Open Houses. Austin really impressed me with his knowledge of the tiny house movement and his willingness to share his experience that he has learned as he builds his own tiny house. He is in the process of building a Fencl, Jay Shafer’s most popular plan. He was sharing his business card and visiting with everyone. Be sure and visit Austin’s website at MiniHouseBuilder.com.

Kirsten Dirsken uses her talent to show off Austin’s work and knowledge in her latest video.

Grinding The Crack, An Exhilarating Wingsuit Flight Video by Jeb Corliss

2011-08-31T21:20:21Z

Shared by Sean
my favorite shot is at 1:31

From Laughing Squid this morning:

"Extreme BASE jumper and wingsuit pilot, Jeb Corliss, has created a new video of his exhilarating wingsuit flight called Grinding the Crack using multiple cameras for the ultimate viewing experience. His top speed in this particular flight was an amazing 122 mph. Kids, don’t try this at home: Corliss has over 12 years experience with 1000 base jumps in 16 countries on 5 continents."

Flywheel Bicycle

2011-08-31T21:15:29Z

Shared by Sean
Braking energy is stored in a flywheel instead of being lost as heat.

Maxwell von Stein's bicycle invention uses a flywheel to store energy. Instead of braking, he can slow the bicycle by transferring the kinetic energy from back wheel into the flywheel -- which spins between the bars of the frame. Then Max can send the flywheel energy back to the wheel when he wants a boost. Watch the video. Thank you, Rasmus.

Related: Job Ebenezer's Dual Purpose Bicycle, mentioned in the article on pedal powered machines.

Liquid Gold

2011-08-30T23:58:11Z

Shared by Sean
I hadn't considered the benefits of foliar feeding (see bottom of the post). We gotta try this!

Logically, we should recycle our urine to capture its many nutrients for growing new food. Here’s a fuller case for that argument, and if you buy it, how to practically accomplish this export on the small scale of a homestead. Most likely you’ll be the only person in your neighborhood mining “liquid gold,” but you may also be an outlaw, two issues this book anticipates. The small book is also chock full of urine lore, including the historical medical, cooking (!), chemical, and agricultural roles urine has had. This small booklet changed my mind.

-- KK

Liquid Gold
Carol Steinfeld
2004 (2007), 95 pages
$11

Available from Amazon

Sample Excerpts:

Sample excerpts:

Hakan Jonsson fertilizes his lawn with a device he made that distributes urine evenly through perforated pipe while he dilutes it with a garden hose.

*

Urinals for women are not new, but the demand for these has been limited.

Lately, women's urinals have popped up at music festivals where disposable cardboard personal urine diverters, such as the P-Mate (below), are provided with which to use them.

The advantage: More service in a smaller space and shorter waits for portable toilets.

*

The largest ears of corn on the left were fed a 3:1 water-urine mixture three times a week. The others were fed far less.

*
According to sanitation researcher Caroline Schonning of the Swedish Institute of Infectious Disease Control, humans rarely excrete disease-causing organisms, orpathogens, in urine. Also, most pathogens die when they leave their hosts, either immediately or shortly thereafter. The only significant urine-transmitted diseases are leptospirosis (usually transmitted by infected animals), schistosoma, and salmonella. The first two are rare--usually found only in tropical aquatic environments--and the last is typically inactivated shortly after excretion. The more likely health risk is urine contaminated by feces that were misplaced in a urine-diverting toilet.

Second excerpt:

There are other ways to use liquid gold. For small amounts of urine, you can make a urine planter. Layer shredded cardboard or paper with chunky sand or peastone. Add more material when the contents shrink as the paper decomposes. Plant hearty nutrient-loving plants, shrubs, or small trees. Urine also works well in hydroponic planter systems.

Layer sand and peastone with shredded cardboard in a planter to create a urine planter. Over time, the mix will decompose into a soil.
*

Applying urine to leaves, not roots, is its most effective use, according to Paul William. "Foliar feeding is much more efficient at stimulating plant growth than fertilizing via the root system only," he says. "The leaves respond within hours of the application."

Paul William applies diluted urine to fruit trees.

To determine the best dilution to prevent the mis from getting too salty, he uses a TDS (total dissolved solids) meter available from hydroponic garden supply stores. "My tap water has 600 ppm (pars per million) as a result of the chlorine salts before I add any urine. I add urine until I get around 1,700 ppm." He also adds a bit of soap so the spray better penetrates the leaves.

"Urine foliar feeding is amazing," he says. "My friends are having huge success growing all kinds of tropical plants doing it, and my temperate plants are so lush and green, it boggles the mind!"

The Agricultural Building and Equipment Plan List

2011-08-04T21:52:02Z

"The University of Tennessee Extension maintains a collection of over 300 building and equipment plans, and all are now available in electronic format for download. The plans are primarily intended for use in Tennessee, but many are appropriate for other locations as well.

The plans came from many sources. Some were developed in The University of Tennessee Extension Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science Department, but most were developed in a cooperative effort with the United States Department of Agriculture and the Cooperative Farm Building Plan Exchange. The Plan Exchange no longer exists, but the plans remain on file and are available." Via The Survivalist Blog.

A Nation-Sized Battery

2011-08-11T02:10:04Z

"Putting the pieces together, our national battery occupies a volume of 4.4 billion cubic meters, equivalent to a cube 1.6 km (one mile) on a side. The size in itself is not a problem: we’d naturally break up the battery and distribute it around the country. This battery would demand 5 trillion kg (5 billion tons) of lead. A USGS report from 2011 reports 80 million tons (Mt) of lead in known reserves worldwide, with 7 Mt in the U.S. A note in the report indicates that the recent demonstration of lead associated with zinc, silver, and copper deposits places the estimated (undiscovered) lead resources of the world at 1.5 billion tons. That’s still not enough to build the battery for the U.S. alone. But even then, we aren’t done: batteries are good for only so many cycles (roughly 1000, depending on depth of discharge), so the national battery would require a rotating service schedule to recycle each part once every 5 years or so. This servicing would be a massive, expensive, and never-ending undertaking." Read more: A Nation-Size Battery.

The Krameterhof

2011-08-04T06:46:04Z

Shared by Sean
http://youtu.be/Bw7mQZHfFVE

crystal-voyager-poster.jpg

2011-08-03T20:39:05Z