I like to reuse plastic bottles. I've made assorted things out of them ... bird feeders, birdseed scoops, etc. Every spring I take 2-liter bottles and cut the bottoms off. The top part then becomes a miniature greenhouse to put over seedlings.

I've also heard of people using plastic bottles to make a coldframe. You fill them with water and set them upright on the ground in a square, then lay a pane of glass or clear plastic over the top. (For extra stability you can dig down a few inches and set the bottles into the earth.) Solar heat will warm up the interior pretty well.

But this is the wackiest reuse I've seen so far.

Tags: crafts
Current Mood: busy

Here's an interesting post about some simple tools that are useful to have in case of emergencies or the collapse of civilization. Seriously. The toolkits for temporary and permanent disasters are very similar.

It makes me grateful for my childhood. We had oil lamps so that when the power went out, which it often does in rural areas, I could still do homework and my parents could grade papers. The woodstove was auxiliary heat most of the time, primary during outages. We cooked on it when the power was out, more than once. We still have that kind of stuff in our house today. I've got an electric mixer, sure -- but I also have a hand-cranked one. Just in case.

Having everything handed to you ... isn't evolutionarily advantageous. It doesn't prepare you for the times when the world decides to remind you that humanity doesn't actually control most of what happens. Remember: our ancestors clawed their way to the top of the food chain through tool use, long before anybody knew that electricity was more than a streak in the sky.

Tags: personal
Current Mood: thoughtful

I love it when science unfolds. People just discovered how to make a functioning memory resistor, or memristor, which was first described years ago.

Yes, this will make some splendid leaps in computers and other technology. It will also make viruses a lot more dangerous. *ponder* Kinda like DNA. And now we have our fourth circuit type. Another step towards quicklife.

Tags: science
Current Mood: busy

According to this article, longshoremen refused to load or unload ships for one full shift, in protest of the war and related issues.

I am just thrilled to see more and more Americans getting involved in activism -- not just protest rallies, but protest actions with a real bite to them. Earlier it was truckers; now it's longshoremen; and in a crucial show of solidarity, some truckers refused to cross the dock picket line even though it wasn't theirprotest to begin with. They agreed with it; that was enough.

Never forget that government is by the consent of the governed. If you do a really, horribly bad job of it -- they can revoke that consent. You can "order" them to go to work, but you can't actually make them work. The upper class does not have the numbers, and most certainly does not have the practical skills, to run this country without the support of the middle and working classes. Right now, the outraged workers are only shutting things down one piece at a time, one day at a time. But look closely: two pieces just stuck together. What if the next strike is, say, farmers? And the longshoremen decide to support them by not loading food, and the truckers decide to support them by not shipping it?

Collective action is power. Just because you're told you don't have it and can't do it doesn't make that true. The colonials sure didn't have permission to host the Boston Tea Party, and look what that led to!

Tags: economics, news
Current Mood: busy