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In this edition: Summer in the Vegetable Garden, Biointensive Growing, Heat Loving Vegetables, Drought Proofing Your Garden, Australian Native Bees, In Praise of Weeds, Solving Citrus Problems, An Old Digger's Tale, Magical Seeds, Citron – the Forgotten Citrus, Saffron – Pure Culinary Gold, Hot 'n' Healthy Barbecue Meals, Soursop – A Taste of the Caribbean, Goats for Small Acreage, Kiwifruit – What's in a Name?
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Today’s global financial cloud got you feeling gray? Vermonter Jim Merkel sees a silver lining.
Back in 1989, the Long Island native was a weapons engineer who helped design a cutting-edge computer that could transmit military secrets, survive a nuclear blast and, a decade before the dawn of the BlackBerry, fit in the palm of his hand. Sitting at a hotel bar in Stockholm, Sweden, he was drinking in his accomplishment when a bulletin flashed on television.
An oil tanker had hit a reef half a world away in Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil, contaminating 1,300 miles of coastline and killing more than 250,000 seabirds, otters, seals, bald eagles and whales. Video showed the culprit to be the Exxon Valdez. But peering into a mirror behind the bar, Merkel saw only himself.
He drove. He flew. He consumed goods produced with or propelled by fossil fuels.
“Of course, the entire industrialized world stood indicted beside me,” he recalls. “Our ‘need’ for ever-more mobility, ever-more progress, ever-more growth had led us straight to this disaster. But in that moment, all I knew was that I, personally, needed to step forward and own up to the damage.”
Returning home to the states, Merkel decided to simplify. He not only cleared away stuff (enough for 13 yard sales) but also tapped his engineering degree from New York’s Stony Brook University to calculate the economic and environmental savings. By doing so, he figured out how to live comfortably — and income-tax-free — on $5,000 a year.
To share his findings, Merkel penned a 2003 book, “Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth.” That begat his Web site, www.radicalsimplicity.org. And those begat his continuing string of more than 1,000 speeches, workshops and classes, including this fall’s “Moving Toward Sustainability” course at the Wilder campus of Community College of Vermont.
Most people monitoring the current fiscal crisis are fixated on what they could lose. Merkel is focused on what everyone could gain.
“This belt-tightening is good for us,” he says. “We’re swimming in a society that’s super consumptive. Right now is such a beautiful opportunity for us to become sustainable.”
geoff on November 26 2008 09:33:28 ·
0 Comments · 227 Reads
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Vaccine hope in MS (multiple sclerosis) link to virus
THE debilitating disease multiple sclerosis, which affects more than 18,000 Australians, could be prevented with a vaccine being trialled in Europe.
Researchers from the University of Queensland yesterday confirmed a link between the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes glandular fever and is carried by more than 90 per cent of the world's population, and multiple sclerosis, saying the vaccine, developed to combat glandular fever, could save thousands of lives... more... http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/vaccine-hope-for-ms-sufferers/2008/11/19/1226770542455.html?sssdmh=dm16.346574
A vitamin found in meats, nuts, grains and cereals might be more effective than sunscreen in preventing skin cancer, new research has found. http://www.smh.com.au/news/specials/health/vitamin-better-than-sunscreen/2008/11/19/1226770501609.html
Research by Australian scientists has used a number of experiments involving sugar and water to prove the honey bee is capable of counting up to four.
Professor Mandyam Srinivasan, of the University of Queensland's (UQ) Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), led the research which found the bees learned how to "count" a number of significant landmarks on their way to a food source. The findings may provide a new breakthrough in the understanding of the insect's cognitive capabilities say the team.
"We began by asking whether bees can learn to ‘count' the number of landmarks that they encounter on the way to a food source," Professor Srinivasan said. "Individually marked bees were trained to receive a reward of sugar solution after they had flown past a specific number of regularly spaced yellow stripes during their flight through a narrow tunnel."
"Depending upon the experiment, this number was one, two, three or four."
"After training, the bees were individually tested by removing the food reward, and observing their searching behaviour in the tunnel to determine which landmark they had associated most strongly with the reward during the training," said Prof Srinivasan.
The study found that bees had the ability to count objects even when confronted with introduced random objects outside the bees' range of experience.
"Bees trained in this way are able to count novel objects, which they have never previously encountered," Professor Srinivasan said. "Our findings provide evidence that bees are capable of counting objects on the way to a food source."
"In all probability, this counting is performed sequentially, and required the ability to maintain a running tally of the number of events, incrementing the tally by one each time an event occurs."
Professor Srinivasan's research paper "Evidence for Counting Bees" appears in the journal Animal Cognition.
geoff on October 29 2008 12:16:52 ·
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I've been thinking a lot lately about what it took to kick start my simple life. I used to think it was to stop spending, but I realise now that was the consequence of something else I did. The big change was to focus on what I did at home and to make my home the most important place for me.
We grow up with advertising, it's ubiquitous, Wherever you look, there will be an advertisement telling you what to buy, where to get it and how wonderful you'll feel when you buy that product. When we wake in the morning and turn on the TV news, advertising is there to greet you. Read the paper - more ads. Go to work or to the park and you'll probably pass billboards and advertising signs along the way. You come home to relax and if you turn on the TV, every few minutes, ads will be telling you what you can't do without and how to get it. You've just spent another day in the modern world - bombarded by advertising.
Advertising make us look outside our homes to find what satisfies us. It teaches us that when we see what we like, we should have it. It never teaches prudence or patience; quite the contrary, it encourages us to go into debt to buy whatever our hearts desire.
My heart's desire is to live well, to be happy and safe and to feel satisfied by what I do each day. Since I started living as I do, I have achieved all those desires. I have never seen any of them advertised on TV or even in the slickest magazine. It's obvious you can't buy the experience of living well, the sense of being happy and safe or the inclination towards satisfaction. These, my friends are all handmade treasures, you have to make them all yourself. And you do it at home.
I believe that focusing on what you're doing at home and knowing that everything you do is a gift to yourself or your family helps build a better life. Go back to the old ways - it's healthier, cheaper and it will give you back your independence. Learning how to look after your family, yourself and your home without buying convenience foods, chemical cleaners and new appliances will liberate you. The money you earn each week will stay in your own bank account, or will allow you to pay off your debts, instead of adding to the billions we all give over to supermarkets and multi-national companies.
Advertising forces you to look outwards all the time. It constantly tells you that your happiness is waiting for you at a store. I would like to encourage you to focus on your home. Start small. You could start by making your own laundry powder (there is a recipe here) or bread (recipe in the sidebar), maybe you could start stockpiling so you don't have to shop as frequently as you do now. Start cooking from scratch or cleaning with non-chemical cleaners. It could be anything. Your start might be to make your bed each morning so that when you go to bed each night you can look forward to a lovely warm and cosy bed. Maybe you could start by making up a roster of chores for the children so that everyone helps at home and you start teaching them how to look after themselves - that is the most wonderful gift. You might start walking to work or making sure you take 20 minutes out of an otherwise busy day to make a cup of tea and sit quietly to relax for a while. You might turn off the TV or the lights more often, or start monitoring your own usage of electricity or water. Maybe you mend a ripped shirt instead of throwing it away, or cut up old towels for rags. There are so many small ways to start and once started, it's easy to add another small thing, then another.
You will find that as you do this, your focus will be on your home. Do your tasks slowly and mindfully and that will help you slow your mind too. See the work you do at home with new respect. It's not an annoyance, it will make your home, and your experience of living there, better - you're building a new way of life. As you work towards what you want for yourself and slowly, piece by piece, add to the fabric of your life, you will see that each level makes you stronger and less reliant on what you'll find outside. And once you find the true joy of being independent and capable of providing your own needs, nothing else will be good enough for you. http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com
Posted by forest
on December 06 2008 08:00:43·
Comments & Ratings · 3 Comments ·
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