Scraps

idealist.org

2011-09-25T16:27:00.001-07:00

Cool site with volunteer opps world wide. Appears to be a leader in this field. Active.

cleaing up my windows computer

2011-07-16T11:31:00.001-07:00

Here's a command under cygwin that will show the size of all subdirectories
$ du -h | sort -rn | du -hsc * -m | sort -n

personalized search scraps

2011-07-01T09:52:00.001-07:00

from http://searchengineland.com/google-now-personalizes-everyones-search-results-31195

How Search Personalization Works

For those unfamiliar with how personalized search works, see my Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History. It goes into great detail about how Google personalizes results.

The short story is this. By watching what you click on in search results, Google can learn that you favor particular sites. For example, if you often search and click on links from Amazon that appear in Google’s results, over time, Google learns that you really like Amazon. In reaction, it gives Amazon a ranking boost. That means you start seeing more Amazon listings, perhaps for searches where Amazon wasn’t showing up before.

The results are custom tailored for each individual. For example, let’s say someone else prefers Barnes & Nobles. Over time, Google learns that person likes Barnes & Noble. They begin to see even more Barnes & Nobles listings, rather than Amazon ones.

Of course, people will be clicking on a variety of sites, in search results. So it’s not a case of having one favorite that that simply shows up for everything. Indeed, Google’s other ranking factors are also still considered. So that person who likes Amazon? If they’re looking for a plumber, Amazon probably isn’t close to being relevant, so the personalization boost doesn’t help. But in cases where Amazon might have been on the edge? Personalization may help tip into the first page of results. And personalization may tip a wide variety of sites into the top results, for a wide variety of queries.

also http://searchengineland.com/the-promise-reality-of-mixing-the-social-graph-with-search-engines-12032

Set List @ Egan’s Jam House

2011-06-13T21:41:00.001-07:00

There Is No Greater Love

Footprints
The Blues
Beatrice
Darn That Dream
Shadow Of Your Smile
Epistrophe
I Know You Know

Witch Hunt
No More Blues*
Smash
Deluge*
Stella By Starlight
Lila’s Song*
All I Need

So What
Flim
Coffee Splat
All Blues
Inspire

twittering might be quicker

2011-05-18T21:18:00.001-07:00

http://twitter.com/#!/permakultur

Dwolla

2011-05-18T20:23:00.000-07:00

Using Dwolla, you can send money to people via Twitter, Facebook or a handful of other social media sites. Currently, Dwolla operates as a web-based service -- so anybody with an Internet connection can sign up through the site -- with applications available for iPhones and all Android-based phones.

From The Atlantic

New Chicks

2011-05-15T10:54:00.001-07:00

The easter bunhy brought is a treat this easter - two baby chicks! One is a "Barred Rock" pullet and the other is a "Black Sex Link" pullet.

Finally Ditching Quicken

2011-05-04T00:21:00.000-07:00

After 13 years of using quicken to manage the bills, I am done. Today they stopped communicating with my bank, demanding that I upgrade for another 2 years of great quicken magic. I am done. I am using my bank to make online payments, and using mint.com (also owned by Intuit) for financial planning.

Hope it works!

Start Your Own Currency

2011-04-06T20:25:00.001-07:00

How to Start Your Own Private Currency - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic

It sounds complicated, but really it's as simple as three steps.

Bitcoin

2011-02-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

Here's my bitcoin address: 1FF3UT9zRF7vy2vj9rBVrXNxSY4orFqc6B

Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto. It is also the name of the open source software designed in order to use this currency.

I am not sure about its scalability.

The Man Who Stopped the Desert

2011-02-04T07:46:00.001-08:00

Yacouba Sawadogo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Over a period of more than two decades, Yacouba Sawadogo's work with zaï holes allowed him to create a forested area of approximately fifty acres

Yacouba Sawadogo is the subject of a documentary feature film 'The Man
Who Stopped the Desert' made by 1080 Films, first screened in the UK in
spring 2010.^[5]

Cedar Hot Tubs

2011-01-24T22:59:00.001-08:00

Wood hot tubs and wood-fired hot tubs - Snorkel Hot Tubs (manufacturer)

Founder of MicroLendeing Speaks out on it's Decline

2011-01-15T12:58:00.001-08:00

Sacrificing Microcredit for Megaprofits - NYTimes.com

There are serious practical problems with treating microcredit as an ordinary profit-maximizing business. Instead of creating wholesale funds dedicated to lending money to microfinance institutions, as Bangladesh has done, these commercial organizations raise larger sums in volatile international financial markets, and then transmit financial risks to the poor.

Good Books on Economics

2011-01-11T14:53:00.001-08:00

Must-Read Economics : Planet Money : NPR

Jobs vs Land

2010-12-22T09:38:00.001-08:00

What would you pick - a job in a sneaker factory, or your ancestral land?

African Farmers Losing Land to Investors - NYTimes.com

But many investments appear to be pure speculation that leaves land fallow, the report found. Farmers have been displaced without compensation, land has been leased well below value, those evicted end up encroaching on parkland and the new ventures have created far fewer jobs than promised, it said.

Performance Art Opportunity

2010-11-29T22:41:00.001-08:00

In Terrorism Stings, Questions of Entrapment - NYTimes.com

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a would-be terrorist who has expressed his desire to launch an attack, or a would-be drug dealer who has indicated an interest in moving a kilo of crack cocaine,” said Kenneth L. Wainstein, a former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s national security division. “So long as that person has expressed an interest in committing a crime, it’s appropriate for the government to respond by providing the purported means of carrying out that crime so as to make a criminal case against him.”

This is dangerous thinking. What if the would-be "entrapee" was actually an "entrapeur" himself, trying to goad these agents into aiding and abetting an unlawful act?

The Khan Academy

2010-10-20T23:10:00.001-07:00

Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere.

We are complementing Salman's ever-growing library with user-paced exercises--developed as an open source project--allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World.

Log in to the Khan Academy web application for user-paced practice and instruction

Permaculture at Pine Ridge

2010-10-18T09:52:00.001-07:00

Permaculture & Regenerative Design News: Oglala Lakota Cultural and Environmental Revitalization Initiative (OLCERI)

The purpose of this project is to help create resilience and self-sufficiency among the people of Pine Ridge by using existing resources to design and create sustainable systems, abundant production of food, energy and shelter, and systems of local trade that will create economic independence.

Example of Girl's Internet Chain Mail

2010-10-15T07:37:00.001-07:00

She asked him if he loved her.

He said “i love you more than anything in this world.”

She asked him what he would do for her.

He said “i would give you the world in a heartbeat.”

Finally, she asked him if he would die for her.

He said “i would take a bullet for you anyday.”

After this, she broke up with him.

Three weeks later, the boy found out that the girl had died from cancer.

She didnt tell anything to him about her illness.

He was devastated.

But what the boy didnt know was that the girl only asked him those things

just to hear him say them one more time, and that she broke up with
him only because

he wo uld be prepared when her death arrived.

A day after that, the boy was found dead with a note in one hand and

a gun in the other.

The note said:

“you died for me just as you said you would do. So i took a bullet for

you, just as i said that i would.”

Now send this...

0 = you will see the dead girl in your room

tonight.

5 = You crush will realise you like him.

10 = Your crush will realise that he likes you.

15 = Your crush will ask you out.

20+ = Your next relationship will be a long

and happy one.

You have 1 hour!!

life is like a stick of beef jerky. once you finish it, you wish it was

there again.

Glowing story about capitalism saving the poor

2010-10-05T12:26:00.001-07:00

Khosla, Sun Co-Founder, Uses Capitalism to Help Poor - NYTimes.com

Unstructured Work

2010-08-01T22:23:00.001-07:00

Jerzy Grotowski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Later in life, he clarified that he quickly found this direction of research limiting, having realized that unstructured work frequently elicits banalities and cultural cliché from participants.

The Case for Sustainable Meat

2010-05-19T07:37:00.001-07:00

The Case for Sustainable Meat | Food | AlterNet

The backyard pig is a common phenomenon in rural communities all over the world. Allowed controlled foraging, the pig will eat fallen nuts and acorns, dropped apples, insects, weeds, and household food scraps. In exchange, they yield meat, skin for cracklings, bones for stocks, and lard for cooking and making soap. Chickens perform similarly, if on a smaller scale. The backyard hen converts household food scraps into eggs. Later, when her egg-laying begins to fail, she adds sustenance to the soup pot. Both animals produce nutrient-rich manure, which then invigorates household gardens—and the surplus of those gardens then goes back into the livestock. These animals help us to round out our household and local ecosystems, enabling us to constantly regenerate nutrition on a local scale.

On the suitability of growing your own food...

2010-05-17T13:02:00.001-07:00

How Much Land Does It Take To Become Food Self-Reliant

"Growing all your own food is not permaculture. It's subsistence farming."

Greenwood Arsonist pleads Guilty

2010-04-30T13:51:00.001-07:00

Greenwood arsonist pleads guilty to setting string of fires | Seattle Times Newspaper

I love this comment:

"they really need to tack on a few years for his wiping poop on the ATM keys too."

Pictures of a cool Rocket Oven

2010-04-28T20:08:00.001-07:00

Wow - I want one of these:

The hard fun playing off - tribe.net

Alice Miller dies

2010-04-27T08:17:00.001-07:00

Alice Miller, Psychoanalyst, Dies at 87 - Laid Human Problems to Parental Acts - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

All children, she wrote, suffer trauma and permanent psychic scarring at the hands of parents, who enforce codes of conduct through psychological pressure or corporal punishment: slaps, spankings or, in extreme cases, sustained physical abuse and even torture.

Unable to admit the rage they feel toward their tormenters, Dr. Miller contended, these damaged children limp along through life, weighed down by depression and insecurity, and pass the abuse along to the next generation, in an unending cycle. Some, in a pathetic effort to please their parents and serve their needs, distinguish themselves in the arts or professions.

Online SAT Prep Courses

2010-04-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

Consumer Reports WebWatch: College Test Prep Takes a Test - A Review of Ten Online SAT Test Preparation Services

Review of Ten Online SAT Test Preparation Services

Maybe this website will help

2010-04-24T10:51:00.000-07:00

Organized
Home

Clean House, Cut Clutter, Get Organized at Home!

http://organizedhome.com/printable/household-notebook

Now here's a great idea

2010-04-23T18:26:00.000-07:00

A meal planner that works like this.
You choose the meals for the week. It produces the following:
* recipes
* grocery list

It would all be driven off the internet.

What do you think?

Remote Place - Tristan da Cunha

2010-04-16T15:13:00.001-07:00

Tristan da Cunha - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Economy

All Tristan families are farmers, owning their own stock. All land is communally owned. Livestock numbers are strictly controlled to conserve pasture and to prevent better-off families accumulating wealth. No outsiders are allowed to buy land or settle on Tristan.[11]

The islands' main source of foreign income is the lobster factory and the sale of postage stamps and coins to overseas collectors. Most people have dual occupations, often working for the local government. Many inhabitants have plots of land (at the patches) on which they grow potatoes.

The 1961 volcanic eruption destroyed the Tristan da Cunha canned crayfish factory, which was rebuilt a short time later. The crayfish farmers work for the South African company Ovenstone, which has an exclusive contract to sell crayfish to the United States and Japan. Even though Tristan da Cunha is a UK overseas territory, it is not permitted direct access to European Union markets. Recently the decline in interest in Tristan crayfish in the United States has meant that the islanders have had to borrow from their reserves. The islands' financial problems may cause delays in updating communication equipment and improving education on the island.

The fire of February 13, 2008, (see history above) has resulted in major economic disruption.

Getting away from it all

2010-04-16T15:01:00.001-07:00

Where Home Is Really About Getting Away From It All - NYTimes.com

FOR the last 16 years, Nick Fahey has been living on an island in the San Juan archipelago north of Puget Sound, in Washington state, where his only full-time companion is a 26-year-old quarter horse called Ig. Mr. Fahey, 67, lives in a cabin on 100 wooded acres that has been in his family since 1930; it has no refrigerator, but there is electricity generated by solar panels, so he has light and can charge his cellphone.

Malcolm McLaren dead

2010-04-08T13:06:00.003-07:00

I love the album Fans, which contained special done-up versions of famous arias.

Malcolm McLaren, Impresario and Rock Music Manager, Is Dead - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com

2:45 p.m. | Updated
Malcolm McLaren, the impresario, promoter and self-promoter who once claimed to have invented punk rock, and who assembled and managed the youthful, unruly members of the Sex Pistols, the breakthrough British punk band, has died. He was 64.

PERMACULTURE CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES: A LEXICON

2010-03-28T10:58:00.001-07:00

PERMACULTURE CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES: A LEXICON

Compiled by Linda Buzzell lbuzzell@aol.com

In addition to the permaculture ethics and principles, the following are some useful permaculture concepts and practices that can be applied in many of the different sectors of society like land care, people care, community practices and even psychology and spirituality:

BERM. A area of elevated soil, usually on the downhill side of a swale. (see “swale”)

CHOP AND DROP. The practice of not moving resources far from their source. In garden care, chopping up trimmings and leaving them in place as a mulch.

ENERGY FLOWS. Careful observation of natural energy flows on a piece of land or in social or economic situations can help us make decisions about where to place various elements.

GABION. Rocks contained within a wire or other porous container to divert or block a stream.

GUILD. A community of elements working harmoniously together to perform a function or various functions.

KEYLINE. Wikipedia: “a technique for maximizing beneficial use of water resources of a piece of land. The Keyline refers to a specific topographic feature linked to water flow. Beyond that however, Keyline can be seen as a collection of design principles, techniques and systems for development of rural and urban landscapes.” Some say that land above the keyline should be considered sacred land.

NEEDS & RESOURCES. In assessing any situation, it is wise to make a list of needs and available resources before beginning a redesign.

LOW TECH SOLUTIONS. Exhaust biological solutions before using technological solutions.

NATURAL SUCCESSION. Design for harmony with natural succession: the pattern whereby pioneering plants (or people) are naturally followed by other species, leading up to a climax forest.

PATTERNS. Observing the patterns in nature, we can then apply these to new situations. The circle and the spiral are key patterns for this purpose. For example, time is a spiral based on the movement of the earth around the sun and the movement of other celestial elements. The straight line is not a common natural pattern.

REDUNDANCY. It is wise to include multiple elements to perform a single function. Good backup creates resilient systems.

RESILIENCE. The ability of a system to survive various shocks. See “redundancy.” Permaculture teacher Rob Hopkins' "The Transition Handbook" is based on applying the concept of resiliency to community systems.

SPIRAL. A common natural pattern used in many permaculture designs.

STACKING. Stacking functions involves a single element in a design performing multiple functions. This element could be a plant, an animal, a person or a social system.

SWALES. On-contour ditches which capture and hold water, making it available to trees and perennials planted on berms built up on the downhill side of the swale with the soil from the ditch. (see “berm”)

ZONES. Designing by zones involves starting at Zone 0 (the self), expanding to Zone 1 (the habitation), and outwards to Zone 5 (wilderness). This pattern can be applied to psychological and social systems as well.

ZONES. From Wikipedia: in permaculture design, “a method of ensuring that elements are correctly placed. Zones are numbered from 0 to 5, and can be thought of as a series of concentric rings moving out from a centre point—where human activity and need for attention is most concentrated—to where there is no need for intervention at all…

* ZONE 0 — The house, or home centre. Here permaculture principles would be applied in terms of aiming to reduce energy and water needs, harnessing natural resources such as sunlight, and generally creating a harmonious, sustainable environment in which to live, work and relax
* ZONE 1 — The zone nearest to the house, the location for those elements in the system that require frequent attention, or that need to be visited often, such as salad crops, herb plants, soft fruit like strawberries or raspberries, greenhouse and cold frames, propagation area, worm compost bin for kitchen waste, and so on.
* ZONE 2 — This area is used for siting perennial plants that require less frequent maintenance, such as occasional weed control (preferably through natural methods such as spot-mulching) or pruning, including currant bushes and orchards. This would also be a good place for beehives, larger scale home composting bins, and so on.
* ZONE 3 — The area where maincrops are grown, both for domestic use and for trade purposes. After establishment, care and maintenance required are fairly minimal (provided mulches and similar things are used), such as watering or weed control once a week or so.
* ZONE 4 — A semi-wild area. This zone is mainly used for forage and collecting wild food as well as timber production. An example might be coppice-managed woodland.
* ZONE 5 — A wild area. There is no human intervention in zone 5 apart from the observation of natural eco-systems and cycles. Here is where the most important lessons of the first permaculture principle of working with, rather than against, nature are learned.

This pattern can be applied to psychological and social systems as well. Articles have been written about “Zone 00” – the self.

ORM - influencing search suggest sublistings

2010-03-20T23:00:00.001-07:00

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/advanced-orm-influencing-google-search-suggest-and-sublistings/16483/

Governing the Commons

2010-02-27T14:22:00.000-08:00

Elinor Ostrom delivers her Nobel Prize lecture

Found out about it on permaculture.tv

Beautiful Oven Stoves

2010-02-27T14:12:00.000-08:00

Low-tech Magazine: Sunbathing in the living room: oven stoves and heat walls

The energetic output of an oven stove is 80 to 90 percent, compared to 40 to 50 percent for metal stoves or central heating appliances, and only 10 to 15 percent for a fireplace – where most heat escapes via the chimney. One of the most striking features of a (wood fuelled) oven stove is the stokehold, which looks ridiculously small compared to the stove itself.

Doorsnede kachelofen Thanks to the high otput, a modest masonry heater or tile stove (heating a room of 60 square meters) only needs 6 cubic meters of wood per year: one tree. If you have even a small garden, you can easily fuel your oven stove by means of your own cuttings – thin wood is very well suited for tile stoves, although it needs to be dry enough.

Search Engine Suggestions Optimzation (SESO)

2010-02-22T12:01:00.001-08:00

Advanced ORM: Influence Google Search Suggest & Sublistings | Search Engine Journal

There are two such nightmares I’d like to discuss today: negative terms in Google’s search suggestions and negative sub-listings on sites who can’t be shaken from the top 10.

Aquaponics

2010-02-20T09:59:00.001-08:00

Aquaponics, a Gardening System Using Fish and Circulating Water - NYTimes.com

What feeds his winter crop of lettuce is recirculating water from the 150-gallon fish tank and the waste generated by his 20 jumbo goldfish. Wastewater is what fertilizes the 27 strawberry plants from last summer, too. They occupy little cubbies in a seven-foot-tall PVC pipe. When the temperature begins to climb in the spring, he will plant the rest of the gravel containers with beans, peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers — all the things many other gardeners grow outside.

Avoid Credid Card fees when travelling aborad

2010-02-20T09:50:00.001-08:00

Your Money - Credit Card Costs Are Cut, but Foreign Fee Stays - NYTimes.com

But if you don’t want to contribute to the card issuers’ bottom lines while you’re on vacation, there is a simple alternative. When you travel outside the United States or make purchases that originate there, use a credit card from Capital One, which charges nothing for the privilege. Or try the Schwab Invest First Visa, which works the same way. Cards from smaller banks or credit unions may have similar policies.

TreeCrops

2010-02-18T14:35:00.000-08:00

Here is a book that inspired permaculture's founder Bill Mollison.

John Forde's Bank

2010-02-15T22:40:00.000-08:00

My grandfather was a banker in Sligo town in Ireland.

Here is a quote from last weekend's Irish Independent comparing how he ran the bank with the current goings on...

Sir -- Many years ago, the AIB branch in Sligo was known as 'John Ford's Bank'; named after a long serving manager who was respected for his knowledge and integrity.

The distressed article by a businessman (Sunday Independent, Feb 7, 2010) on how banks in Ireland operate must be very offensive to old style managers who valued long term relationships.

Ireland's banks got too big for their boots and blew their capital on crazy property speculative projects.

When the dust finally settles on Irish banks, they will need to be broken up into smaller regional units. Managers should be recruited who have local knowledge and have more discretion as to lending limits. We need more John Fords in Irish banking and fewer Masters of the Universe.

I have cut and pasted - see the whole article here.

Sometimes I learn about fascinating people only when they die

2009-11-03T12:45:00.001-08:00

For example, Claud Levi Strauss. I do not think he is connected with the jeans. He was a philosopher and anthropologist.

His interpretations of North and South American myths were pivotal in changing Western thinking about so-called primitive societies. The accepted view held that primitive societies were intellectually unimaginative and temperamentally irrational, basing their approaches to life and religion on the satisfaction of urgent needs for food, clothing and shelter. Mr. Lévi-Strauss rescued his subjects from this limited perspective. Beginning with the Caduveo and Bororo tribes in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil, he found among them a dogged quest not just to satisfy material needs but also to understand origins, a sophisticated logic that governed even the most bizarre myths, and an implicit sense of order and design, even among tribes who practiced ruthless warfare.

The full story is here.

No More Plastic

2009-10-21T09:26:00.001-07:00

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

Some Observations in a Story About Farm Runoff

2009-09-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

Health Ills Abound as Farm Runoff Fouls Wells - Series - NYTimes.com

In Morrison, more than 100 wells were polluted by agricultural runoff within a few months, according to local officials.

Sounds pretty bad! This is a real problem with real consequences!

Yet runoff from all but the largest farms is essentially unregulated by many of the federal laws intended to prevent pollution and protect drinking water sources.

Hmm, why is "regulation" the first thing that comes to mind when rectifying a problem like this? Don't we all have an incentive to have clean drinking water?

...many of the agricultural pollutants that contaminate drinking water sources are often subject only to state or county regulations.And those laws have failed to protect some residents living nearby.

The tone here is surprising - the poor people are only protected by local regulations, not federal regulations. But, why indeed are local regulations not protecting the local residents?

To address this problem, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has created special rules for the biggest farms, like those with at least 700 cows.

Yay, feds to the rescue!

But thousands of large animal feedlots that should be regulated by those rules are effectively ignored because farmers never file paperwork

Boo! Paperwork!

And regulations passed during the administration of President George W. Bush allow many of those farms to self-certify that they will not pollute, and thereby largely escape regulation.

The tone here is interesting. "Self certify", "George Bush", "escape regulation". I think Bush was the worst president we ever had, but I do not feel that self-certification is a ticket to escaping regulation. I applaud anything that encourages self determination.

In Arkansas and Maryland, residents have accused chicken farm owners of polluting drinking water. In 2005, Oklahoma’s attorney general sued 13 poultry companies, claiming they had damaged one of the state’s most important watersheds.

Yay, the people are calling out these polluters!

It is often difficult to definitively link a specific instance of disease to one particular cause, like water pollution. Even when tests show that drinking water is polluted, it can be hard to pinpoint the source of the contamination.

The tests won't prove what is obvious to the people - like the brain not understanding what the heart knows. In a functional society, we listen to all intelligence. In this case the people know. It is obvious to everyone, including the polluters, the attorneys, the judges, and the local folks.

How Easy Credit Fuels Housing Bubble

2009-09-10T09:20:00.001-07:00

I like this short article on the financial crisis - it leaves out the CDWs and other exotic financial instruments, and instead focuses on something closer to home for most of us - household debt.

First, the availability of cheap mortgages increases the demand for housing, which can push up house prices. In turn, as demand increases and house prices go higher, lenders become overconfident. They then begin offering mortgage credit on even cheaper terms, fueling a violent cycle where household valuations become increasingly unrealistic. In such a credit cycle, the growth in house prices reflects cheap debt, not the underlying earnings power of households.

The rest of the article is here: Lessons From The Fall: Household Debt Got Us Into This Mess - Planet Money Blog : NPR

Buying Land

2009-09-09T22:31:00.000-07:00
Just had to reprint this message from Toby Hemmenway, my permaculture teacher, so I don't lose it!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Toby Hemenway
To: permaculture
Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:04:03 -0700
Subject: Re: [permaculture] how to acquire land
Notes from my own experience and observations: In acquiring land, think carefully and honestly about what your goals are. In general, I urge buying the best soil and water you can afford (having once had steep land with heavy, exhausted soil and not much water). Yes, soil can be rehabilitated, in 5-10 years. And water can be harvested and stored, after swaling and pond building. But you will get a big head start by beginning with good soil and access to water, and can invest your energy in producing and enhancing habitat, rather than rehabilitation.

How much land do you really need? If your goal is self-reliant food production, an acre or three is more than enough; really, a half acre will produce vast amounts. Or do you want more land to have privacy and control? Those are two very different goals. I once thought I wanted lots of land to manage, but I really wanted solitude. You don't need to own the land for that, and it just makes more work and higher taxes.

I'm familiar with Ran Prieur's project, and he spends most of his time working very hard on rehabilitation and dealing with the problems of acreage, and not so much, it seems, on actually improving (in the sense of building and planting) and producing on his place. He's been working there 5 years, lost and is still losing a huge proportion of his plantings, and doesn't have buildings up yet AFAIK. If just working hard on land is what you enjoy, that's fine. Or if rehabilitation is your goal, rather than production, get an exhausted or cut-over piece. But rehab is a lot more work, takes a longer timeframe before yields become apparent, and will take up a larger proportion of your time than growing food if you try to do both.

Community is very important. Eventually you will start being affected by your neighbors, and many parts of the country where land is cheap have inhabitants who may not share your values. At some point that will probably get to you.

I get a lot of consulting calls to look at steep, cut-over land in remote locations, and when I see how hard the people there have worked to get so little, my heart aches. Any savvy farmer wouldn't go near those places. City folk with dreams buy them. And my recommendation, if I'm blunt, is to move to better land.

You get what you pay for. From my own hard-earned experience, I'd rather have a small piece of good, level land with ample water near a supportive community than a big piece of burnt-out land in an unsupportive area.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com

Spuds

2009-08-17T20:55:00.000-07:00
Here is a picture of the spuds the girls (Lila, Dessa, and Sophie) fished out of the potato patch tonight! I hope there are more in there.

Who is riling these people up?

2009-08-11T22:42:00.001-07:00

I am really having a hard time understanding the "angry protesters" who are demonstrating against "obamacare." They speak as if they suspect a conspiracy to take something away from them. Here are some excerpts from the article Senator Goes Face to Face With Dissent - NYTimes.com
Many said the Obama administration’s plans for a new health care system were just another example of a federal government that had again gone too far, just as it had, they said, with the economic stimulus, the auto industry bailout and the cap-and-trade program.

“This is about the dismantling of this country,” Katy Abram, 35, shouted at Mr. Specter, drawing one of the most prolonged rounds of applause. “We don’t want this country to turn into Russia.”
Did I say suspicion? No, it is stronger than that. Their is fear and righteous indignation in their voices.
“We believe there are several issues out there that leave the existence of the Republic at risk,” he added, “not the least of which is this Obamacare.”
I wouldn't call it conviction.
But for all his efforts, tempers boiled over 15 minutes into the meeting. Standing two feet from the senator, Craig Anthony Miller, 59, shouted, “You are trampling on our Constitution!”
Posession? That's nearer the mark.
Mr. Miller, shaking, stood his ground. He said he was furious that the senator’s staff had limited the questioning. “One day,” he said to loud applause, “God is going to stand before you, and he’s going to judge you!”
This looks more like projection - these folks are screaming at their own shadow.

Global Warming a Threat to National Security

2009-08-09T10:43:00.001-07:00

In an article in today's New York Times, US policy makers are quoted as saying "the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest."

In a response, a spokesman for the earth responded "it is the so-called national interest, with its penchant for destroying ecosystems, that is the threat to world peace and stability."

My New Presentation Tool

2009-07-31T09:33:00.001-07:00

Prezi - The zooming presentation editor, looks promising. Basically you create a single huge canvas, and put whatever you want there. Prezi has tools for adding images, pdfs, text, etc. And you can scale theese objects to whatever size you want.

Then, and this is the neat part, you orchestrate a tour of your canvas. As the presentation runs, it visits different parts of your canvas, zooming in on details, zooming out for a big picture, all as you specify.

It looks really easy, and really cool. A great alternative to sequential slide tools like Powerpoint, in which the context is easily lost.

Credit Crisis Visualation

2009-07-21T14:23:00.001-07:00

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Return from Camp

2009-07-15T23:31:00.000-07:00
Precious moments...

I picked up Schuyler at 11:30 last night. He had just returned from a 4-week trip to Morocco. I could tell from his conversation with Molly (she called 2 minutes after we got has bag and walked out) that it had been a life changing experience for him. Big things happened to Schuyler in Morocco.

At 1:30 AM I once again hopped in the car, this time on my way South. I knew that I had a 7 hour trip ahead of me, and if I got past Portland before the morning rush hour, I could steal a couple of hours of sleep and still make it to Camp Tamarack by the 10:30 deadline.

I poured myself a double cappuccino, and packed 4 cool cans of EMV for the trip, and headed out. By 5:30 I was way past Portland and one exit away from my turn off, so I got off at the rest area and set my alarm for 7:30. I curled up in the back seat, and slept as the brilliant rising sun warmed my skin.

I got out of there at about 8am, and headed east on Highway 20. I grabbed an egg mcmuffin to go from McDonalds (funny how those places are so popular for breakfast in the country) and a coffee in the town of "Lebanon." There was road work and some slow pokes, so I did not make as good time as I had counted on. At 10:29 I pulled up at Suttel Lake campsite, threw on my swimsuit, and jumped in the lake. By 10:50 I was at Camp Tamarack, and by 11:00 I walked up to the horse corral. Across the field I saw a hand waving vigorously at me, and knew that it was Lila though I could not make out her face with all that gear on (and her hair up to boot).

The camp staff came out and made their presentations to the parents. I learned that many of them (perhaps half, if not more) were college age and coming from overseas. South Africa, England, Scotland, Australia. It was a good crew.

After the intros, the beginner horse class performed a demonstration. One by one they guided their horses around the course, in which there were barrels which they had to circle. I could see that there is some subtlety to the art of guiding a beast 10 times your weight and with a will besides. Lila did well.

As I watched the next class come up, I noticed a figure approaching out of the corner of my eye. It was Lila, and she was making a beeline for her Daddy before she burst into tears. All that fun, all that great camp stuff, and still when a Mom and Dad show up she realizes how much she missed them. I burst into tears myself!

I got the quick camp summary - she was friends with everyone - every single person in the camp. The food was great, she loved her horse Roxie, and this was so-and-so from Portland and that was so-and-so from Seattle and so on. A girl named "Lyric" had helped her to transpose "Let It Be" into a better key, and Lila had performed it for the camp to thunderous applause.

"I might not go to camp Nakanawa next year" she said, with gravity. That means she really liked camp Tamarack!

For the next hour or two I tried to extricate my little girl from her 11-day sleepover camp, but there were lots of goodbyes, hugs, and stories to share. It was a great, healthy, wholesome experience, and though she was still my little girl, she had grown.

We packed up the jeep, and set off back to Seattle at about 1 in the afternoon. It was hot outside, in the 80s at least, and the only air conditioning was the wind. Lila told me more details. The meals. The skits. The rafting trip. The "tadger" who mysteriously rearranged furniture in the middle of the night. The girl no one liked but whom Lila and a friend had made efforts to include. The girl who was mean. The crazy counsellor with multiple pairs of outrageously colored spandex tights. Oh, and by the way, most of them have facebooks.

She fell asleep. I drove. We stopped and swam in "Lake Detroit", a welcome cooler. She slept some more. Molly called and we talked almost all the way to Portland. I drank another EMV - I don't think I would have had such an easy time without that WunderGetränk.

The heat was getting to us, especially after the traffic in Portland. We decided to stop at the next town - it was Longview, an old logging town which has seen better days. We ate at a fish & chips place, and Lila regaled me with more stories. We got gas, and I was struck by the skinny Asian lady in the business suit, stilettos, and a Russian accent. What was she doing here? I imagined that she was part of the casino scene.

More driving. How much longer, daddy? Two hours. She laid down to sleep, and I said that she should try to stay up so she can sleep at home. How about reading. Its too windy. Its true, driving at 75 with all the windows open makes it hard to read.

I remembered what we used to do on long trips when we were kids, when Papa (my Dad's father) joined us. The rosary. That was it. Nothing made miles go by like the rosary did.

So, I quickly refreshed Lila on the Lords Prayer, and then taught her the second part of the "Hail Mary". Then I dedicated the rosary to Papa, and commenced to praying. Our father... give us this day. Hail Mary... Holy Mary... Hail Mary... Holy Mary... and so on. I could not remember the important bits, about the five glorious mysteries, but I improvised. It was marvellous.

When we used to say the rosaries with Papa as kids, we said it so fast that Papa started the hail marys before we had finished the holy marys. I pondered - was that just mechanical, or was there some inner rhythm to the whole thing that made it real at that pace. Lila and I were much slower. She had to think about the words, and I'm afraid that some of them are not the ones you find in catechism.

That got us as far as Tacoma. By the time we hit Seattle the sun was setting. It had been a beautiful day all throughout the northwest, and the end was superb. We pulled into the house. I expected Xander and Schuyler to have left a mess, but it was all pretty fine. Tula and Sweety were overjoyed to see Lila again.

Unpack the car. Lila looking at her room, taking it all in. I'm Back. Ahhhhh.

Time for bed. I read a story. A Jewish folk tale from the land of Chelm, about the first Schlemiel. Excellent. Lights out. Cuddle.

A few minutes later, and I try to get up but Lila pulls me back. "Sweetheart, I need to go downstairs. Welcome back home. Time to go night night."

"I enjoyed the car ride, Daddy. That was fun."

Landmark on Speedometer

2009-07-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

Organic Scalability

2009-06-28T03:43:00.001-07:00

Spoiled: Organic and Local Is So 2008 | Mother Jones
Real sustainability, he argues, is defined not by a food system's capacity to ensure happy workers or organic lima beans, but by whether the food system can sustain itself—that is, keep going, indefinitely, in a world of finite resources. A truly sustainable food system is inherently resilient—more capable of self-correction and self-revitalization than its industrial rival.

..

In fact, most of the familiar candidates for alternative food would have trouble operating on the kind of scale necessary for a world of 6.7 billion people. Consider what it would take to make our farm system entirely organic. The only reason industrial organic agriculture can get away with replenishing its soils with manure or by planting nitrogen-fixing cover crops is that the industry is so tiny—making up less than 3 percent of the US food supply (and just 5.3 percent even in gung-ho green cultures like Austria's). If we wanted to rid the world of synthetic fertilizer use—and assuming dietary habits remain constant—the extra land we'd need for cover crops or forage (to feed the animals to make the manure) would more than double, possibly triple, the current area of farmland

Strawberries!

2009-06-15T21:22:00.000-07:00
Hey guys, look what we are enjoying from our strawberry patch!

A Girl and her Dog

2009-06-15T20:57:00.000-07:00
Lila and Sweety sharing a moment at breakfast.

Bubble in College Tuitions?

2009-06-03T12:33:00.001-07:00

Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst? - Chronicle.com
Consumers who have questioned whether it is worth spending $1,000 a square foot for a home are now asking whether it is worth spending $1,000 a week to send their kids to college. There is a growing sense among the public that higher education might be overpriced and under-delivering.

Composting Doggy Doo Do

2009-05-26T13:56:00.001-07:00

Here are some links on composting dog waste. I find myself picking up a lot of this stuff and throwing it in the garbage. It is not the most pleasant experience, and I hate the idea of sending all that plastic-wrapped poo to the landfill where it will decompose anaerobically.
http://www.cityfarmer.org/petwaste.html
http://www.intergate.com/~saluki/doggydoo.html

Baobab

2009-05-26T10:39:00.001-07:00

Op-Ed Contributor - What Will Happen When the Baobab Goes Global? - NYTimes.com
The baobab was approved for European markets last year, and the Food and Drug Administration is expected to follow suit soon. The fruit’s dry pulp will be sold as an ingredient in smoothies and cereal bars. Already, a small jar of African baobab jam made in England sells for around $11. According to the Natural Resources Institute in Britain, an international baobab industry could bring in about $1 billion a year and provide jobs for 2.5 million African families. On paper this sounds great, but there’s another side to the picture.

Holy Cow

2009-05-22T22:41:00.001-07:00

Ex-President of South Korea, Roh, Dies in Hiking Fall - NYTimes.com
“I can’t look you in the face because of shame,” Mr. Roh told reporters before he presented himself for questioning by prosecutors in Seoul, who had accused him of taking $6 million in bribes from a businessman while in office. “I apologize for disappointing the people.”

Italian K2 Conqueror Dies

2009-05-15T16:45:00.001-07:00

Achille Compagnoni, a Conqueror of K2, Dies at 94 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com
The Italians’ moment of glory came when competition to conquer the Himalayas was fierce, said Agostino Da Polenza of the Everest-K2-CNR Committee, a mountain research group in Italy. Less than a year earlier, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had become the first to reach the summit of Everest.

The K2 ascent became a source of national pride; the climbers were decorated by both the Italian and the Pakistani governments.

Lead in Urban Gardens

2009-05-15T08:49:00.001-07:00

Today's NY Times has an article about lead in urban gardens.
Soil is likely to contain high levels of lead if it is near any structure built before 1978, when lead-based paint was taken off the market, or if a building of that vintage was ever demolished on the site.

Soil with a pH level above 7 binds with lead, making it less likely to be absorbed by plants and the human body if the dirt is inadvertently inhaled or ingested.

But some experts advise planting greens, specifically Indian mustard and spinach, for a couple of seasons as phytoremediation, or plant-based mitigation, before growing crops intended for food. By growing spinach for three months, researchers at the University of Southern Maine lowered the lead count in one garden by 200 p.p.m. Of course, the lead-leaching crop cannot be eaten or composted and must be disposed of as toxic waste.
For Urban Gardeners, Lead Is a Concern - NYTimes.com

Liars Poker author calls "The End of Wall Street"

2009-05-14T16:37:00.001-07:00

The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com
I’d never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous—which is one of the reasons the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable.

Composting Wisdom

2009-05-14T00:05:00.000-07:00
Just read this little article on home scale composting. Malcolm Beck is the author. Great read. Think I'll tear apart my wooden box and replace it with a 9-foot long chicken wire section wrapped into a circle.

Pirates

2009-04-13T09:42:00.001-07:00
Johann Hari purports that You are being lied to about pirates. Interesting read, and all the comments are great.

Edible Forest Gardens in 45 minutes

2009-04-10T20:12:00.001-07:00

Executive Pay solution in 45 minutes

2009-03-22T11:50:00.000-07:00
The executive pay hubub that has been in the news of late has recently brought the administration to consider new regulations and government oversight. Certainly the market for executive pay has demonstrated excesses in the past decade, with some exceutives snaring packages that reward them ridiculous sums no matter how the company performs. In this 45-minute paper I will examine this as a market problem - that is, I propose that the executive pay problem is a market distortion, and I will seek to correct that not by rules and regulations, but rather by introducing structures into the market for executives.

So, how do these execs get these lavish pay packages, anyway? Well, there is a whole recruiting process, in which the BOARD enlists the help of a HEADHUNTER firm to locate candidates for the position. The headhunter will present a list of candidates to the board. The board can themselves nominate people to the list, which would include ASSOCIATES OF THE BOARD, or INTERNAL CANDIDATES. Then presumably the board, or a subcomittee of the board, considers the list. It is narrowed down. Interviews are conducted. The COMPENSATION COMMITTEE is consulted for "appropriate compensation rates." Eventually an offer is made, and the FINAL CANDIDATE accepts.

To recap, here is a list of players in this process

the BOARD - makes all hiring decisions, including selection and compensation
the HEADHUNTER firm - locates external candidates
INTERNAL CANDIDATES - existing officers in the company
ASSOCIATES OF THE BOARD - friends and aquaintences of the individuals on the board
COMPENSATION COMMITTEE - recommends the compensation package based on "market rates"
FINAL CANDIDATE - the exeuctive who is chosen and accepts the offer

Now, to look at things another way, lets consider which of these players is involved in the "supply" of executives, and which is involved in the "demand"

Player

Supply

Demand

Notes

BOARD

x

x

HEADHUNTER

x

INTERNAL CANDIDATES

x

BOARD ASSOCIATES

x

COMPENSATION COMITTEE

x

Looking at this chart, a few things are interesting. First of all, the ones who actually pay for the executives, the SHAREHOLDERS, are not in the picture. Also, the BOARD is involved both in the supply and the demand, as they determine the pool of candidates from their associates.

One thing that is not shown in the chart is that the membership of the board are usually composed of executives at other firms. Thus, these people have an incentive to increase the pay of the executive they are hiring because it influences the market price of executives, and thus the price thay are entitled to demand. The compensation committee is itself compensated by the board, and thus has an incentive to recommend higher prices.

So, it is apparent that there are some relationships in this market that have the effect of pushing prices up. What could we introduce into this situation that might have a beneficial effect. Here are some ideas.

1. Involve the shareholders - they are the ones who pay for this, and perhaps they should have a say in such an important and expensive company expense

2. Change the composition of the board - since they are executives themselves, they are incentivized to push up the price

3. Increase the supply of applicants - there are lots of people that have the skills to run a company, mor than the boards friends or other execs.

4. Involve folks from all pay levels in the company in the hiring process - this would introduce some level of sanity in the process.

Note: I wrote this in 45 minutes of spare time

Promising resournce on permaculture design in the west coast

2009-02-23T11:23:00.000-08:00
West Coast Food Forestry
Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work Permaculture Health

Is it worthwhile to plant wheat in a 12'x2' strip?

2009-02-05T22:20:00.001-08:00

Deciding if it is practical to grow some grain on the property. Like how much would I need to grow in order for it to be worthwhile. Found this nugget on the Howling Duck Blog:
presuming that you want to grow enough for your food needs and have enough left over for a subsequent year’s sowing, and are able to sow and harvest adequately, I suggest you could purchase a single 25 kg bag for example. If you sow 1/2 of it in good fertile soil with adequate spacing (30 lbs would sow about 1/4 acre….and save the other 30 lbs in case of need to resow due to natural disaster such as hail…) and it grows well, you could anticipate harvesting up to ~ 6 bushels (360 lbs) and that is based on a good yield of 25 bushels/acre.

A single bushel of harvested and clean wheat kernels would make ~70-80 regular sized loaves of bread.

- Grow your own bread « Howling Duck Ranch

Putin Blames Capitalists for Crisis

2009-01-28T21:19:00.001-08:00

At Davos Forum, Russia and China Blame Capitalists for Economic Crisis - NYTimes.com
In the official opening address of the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke of a financial “perfect storm” that has decimated the old system, rendering it obsolete.

“A year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasized the U.S. economy’s fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects,” he said, speaking through a translator. “Today, investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist.”

But the damage goes beyond Wall Street, he said. “The entire economic growth system, where one regional center prints money without respite and consumes material wealth, while another regional center manufactures inexpensive goods and saves money printed by other governments, has suffered a major setback.”

Vegetable Garden at the White House

2009-01-28T21:15:00.001-08:00

Obamas Hire Chef From Chicago - NYTimes.com
Mr. Kass’s appointment should please chefs like Alice Waters, who have lobbied the Obamas to set an example for the rest of the country by emphasizing food that is healthy, local and sustainable. It further suggests that a vegetable garden on the White House grounds, another of Ms. Waters’s dreams, could be on the horizon.

Git on, Gitmo

2009-01-22T09:51:00.001-08:00

Obama Issues Directive to Shut Down Guantánamo - NYTimes.com
President Obama signed executive orders Thursday effectively ending the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program, directing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within a year

Where art thou, Polonius?

2009-01-22T09:42:00.001-08:00

From today's NY Times:

Even more than their American counterparts, borrowers in Britain turned
to local banks to fuel a real estate boom that was as much a national
pastime as a rational decision about what to buy. Household debt as a
percentage of disposable income hit 177 percent in 2007, compared with
141 percent in the United States.

Obama increases government transparency

2009-01-21T12:52:00.001-08:00

Day One and the government is opening up its windows to the people. This from the Wall Street Journal
In an attempt to deliver on pledges of a transparent government, Mr.
Obama said he would change the way the federal government interprets
the Freedom of Information Act. He said he was directing agencies that
vet requests for information to err on the side of making information
public -- not to look for reasons to legally withhold it -- an
alteration to the traditional standard of evaluation.
I feel like I imagined that Eastern Europeans felt when their autocrats fell. Feels pretty good!

The Military Industrial Perrenial Polyculture Complex

2009-01-15T20:53:00.000-08:00
The RAND corporation has a paper out in engineering perrennial polycultures - interesting perspective: http://www.endgame.org.uk/pdfs/polyculture.pdf

Said another way, had the first inhabitants of the prairies found that there were enough
edible grasses there for their needs, they would not have needed to become annual tillers and
sowers. They could have survived simply by reaping what they needed from the prairie year
after year. Indeed, when human populations were smaller, many societies did subsist on what
wild ecosystems provided. Prairie ecosystems—with their perennial polycultures and mixed
intercropping—required no maintenance, yet provided food for a variety of animals, continuous
ground cover and deep root systems to prevent erosion, legumes to provide natural
fertilizers, and natural disease and pest control measures. Thus, if we could engineer more
bountiful prairies, we could dispense with much of the machinery, energy, fertilizers, irrigation,
herbicides, and pesticides that are mainstays of modern agriculture. That, in turn, would
have secondary benefits in environmental remediation, biodiversity, energy use, and—as I will
argue below—in combating global problems such as poverty, hunger, and even disparities in
education.

Speculation is merely one aspect of what happened...

2009-01-12T11:06:00.001-08:00

I have been wondering how much of the rise in oil prices was due to speculation, or recursive market effects. I guess 60 minutes discussed this subject last night - although I missed it, Barry Ritholtz has written a nice response. Here is an excerpt from his great post on the rise and fall of oil:
There’s a lot more, but the bottom line is this: Higher energy prices
were caused many many factors over the past 8 years. Certainly,
speculation played a part at the end of the run — but it always does.
Oil fell more precipitously than it rose, but don’t all markets do
that? Didn’t the S&P just plummet nearly 50% in a year, after a 5
year run?

Are antibiotics bad for you? Hope not...

2009-01-08T00:59:00.001-08:00

Crops absorb livestock antibiotics, science shows — Environmental Health News
For half a century, meat producers have fed antibiotics to farm animals to increase their growth and stave off infections. Now scientists have discovered that those drugs are sprouting up in unexpected places.

Vegetables such as corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics when grown in soil fertilized with livestock manure, according to tests conducted at the University of Minnesota.

Snowmen

2008-12-22T22:10:00.000-08:00

Lila and her friend Cedar were making snowmen today, when a passer by stopped to take a picture. He uploaded it to the PI's photo blog.

10 Years of Christmas Crafts

2008-12-19T23:41:00.000-08:00
Every Christmas, we make presents for our family and special friends. That's right - we MAKE presents. Molly and I were trying to remember all the things we made in the last 10 years - here is what we have come up with. I'll see if I can get pictures.

2008 - Felt Christmas ornaments
This year we will be giving out Ornaments for your tree felted with care in our kitchen.

2007 - I can't remember

2006 - Hmm, did we do anything this year?

2005 - "Home Made" music CD
This was an actual CD with music performed by each of us, solo and in various ensembles.

2004 - Lightswitch plates
We took plastic switchplates from the hardware store, and decopaged them with all sorts of things. One of my favorites was the Ant & Bee set!

2003 - Masks
Paper mache maskes, molded on our own (and friends) faces! My parents called this one "wierd!"

2002 - Decopage Chinese Takeout boxes with Cheese Biscuits
We had to let the glue dry long enough so the fumes would not infiltrate the cookies. Also, Molly made some gorgeous pillows this year.

2001 - Picture Frames
Picture frames made out of boxes and other sundry items, containing pictures of the kids when they were still cute. This was one of our earlier decopage attempts.

2000 - Straw Ornaments
We took bynches of straw and formed them into Christmas ornaments.

1999 - Paper Stars
This is the earliest Christmas craft that I can remember. We took colored wak paper and folded them into complex star shapes. A lot of work!

Separating "real" from "secondary" market forces

2008-12-11T12:53:00.000-08:00
We worship an idealized market. And yet, in real life it proves to be a fickle god. Like Zeus it throws thunderbolts at hapless earthlings on a whim. But looking closer, can we determine what portion of price movement are due to fundamental supply and demand issues, and what portion is due to the actions of all the secondary participants?

Is this possible, anyone?

Today's New York Times (read the story here) points out that demand for oil is down this year - the first time since 1983. It would be interesting to correllate the actual demand/consumption of oil with its price. If we did so then we could quantify the effect of real demand on the price of oil - whatever is left over must be due to secondary "market" forces (e.g. speculation).

Another argument for Local Market Economies

2008-12-10T23:06:00.001-08:00
I like this article by David Korten in this month's Yes magazine. He is taking about how to create a sustainable economy. I haven't read the whole thing yet, but this quote caught my eye:
Smith envisioned a world of local market economies populated by small entrepreneurs, artisans, and family farmers with strong community roots engaged in producing and exchanging goods and services to meet the needs of themselves and their neighbors. His vision bears little resemblance to the Wall Street economy of footloose global capital, credit default swaps, reckless speculation, and global corporate empires.

Rising Yields and Nutrition

2008-12-04T09:19:00.001-08:00
It is no secret that agriculture has achieved increasing yields over the last century. Several techniques have been used, from hybridization, to denser plantings, to liberal use of petroleum based fertilizer. And others.

The Organic Center recently sponsored some research in which they studied the level of nutrition in staple foods as it related to these increasing yields. Their conclusion: while the yields of corn, wheat, and others increased, the nutritional value of the crops have generally decreased.

Here is a quote:
But American agriculture’s single-minded focus
on increasing yields over the last half-century
created a blind spot where incremental erosion in
the nutritional quality of our food has occurred.
This erosion, modest in some crops but significant
in others for some nutrients, has gone largely
unnoticed by scientists, farmers, government and
consumers.
Read the entire report (small pdf) from the The Organic Center.

Against the Grain

2008-12-03T16:07:00.000-08:00
I am stuck in the airport today. Luckily I have a copy of "Against the Grain" to read. This book was written by Richard Manning. He has been laying a case as to how the activity of agriculture has hijacked civilization. It is a good read.

One of the points he covers is that of subsidized agriculture in the United States. We all know that agriculture is heavily subsidized, and I for one used to think that this was an unfortunate necessity to preserve the way of life of American farmers. However, it is clear that the life of the american farmer is already unrecognizable from how it was 30, 40, 50 years ago. Modern corporate agriculture, the chief beneficiary of the subsidies, has displaced the self-sufficient, independant, clear thinking farmer.

Agriculture is not a closed system. It requires many inputs from the outside, mostly in the form of fertilizer. The fertilizer contains nitrogen, which helps to channel the crop's energy to producing big, ripe fruit. There used to be a problem when fruit got too big. In the case of wheat, it would get so big that the stem could not support it, so farmers had to moderate their application of manure and other nitrogen fertilizers. This problem has been mitigated by hybridization of wheat to product plants with smaller, stockier stems, that won't fall over.

The runoff from all this fertilizer is causing huge problems in our waterways. There is a part of the Gulf of Mexico called the "Dead Zone" - a place where nothing lives - that is caused by excess nitrogen in the water.

Farms used to include livestock, the manure of which would be used to fertilize the crops. In addition, some of the crop was saved each year for seed. Also, farms used to grow several crops, which would be rotated to preserve the nutrients in the soil. According to Manning, this has all changed. Seed is purchased each year from the big Ag companies - (e.g. Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto). Fertilizer, produced from petroleum, is likewise purchased from outside. Crop rotations are not necessary as chemical applications can replenish the soil nutrients. Furthermore, government paychecks are super important to the farmer. He knows he can count on them when a crop fails, so he has an incentive to plant on poor land - he'll get payed anyway.

News Flash: Economic Activity Unsustainable

2008-10-27T23:34:00.001-07:00
Michael Mandel at Business Week wrote a great article about the current economic crisis. The article is entitled It's Not a Crisis of Confidence. Here is a quote:

The real problem with the economy is that long accepted patterns of cross-border technology transfer, trade, and finance are simply unsustainable.

The Limits of Self Interest

2008-10-23T08:55:00.000-07:00
Alan Greenspan testified today about the credit crises. From the Reuters story there is one telling quote:
"Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief."
So, the next time a policy maker chides you with the "let the market decide" mantra, take a deep breath, remember that self-interest and markets are super effective for determining some things, but they are not always right. Even Greenspan admits that.

Driveway Rehab

2008-10-20T21:48:00.000-07:00
I called around last week asking for bids on cutting up a 30x12 foot concrete part of my driveway. We have plans to turn this area into gardens, and concrete just won't do. I called around for prices, and the cheapest I could get anyone to quote me was $600.

That's a lot of money for me, so after consulting with some friends, I decided to do this job myself. Some of the concrete came up easily. I would just stick a pry bar underneath, apply pressure to force it up, and then whack with a sledgehammer to break into smaller pieces. Eventually we plan to use these pieces for raised beds and footpaths. But I bet we will have plenty, so if you need some concrete, I would be happy to drop some off on your doorstep.

It is quite satisfying work, really, and afterward my muscles ached in a way that reminded me of a good days work. It is a feeling that doesn't come often from my "day job" as a software engineer. I thought the whole job would take me a day, but after about 8 hours of work I have gotten only a third up.

So, while I am grateful for the time I spent prying, heaving, and bending in the dirt, I am a bit vexed that I wasn't wasn't able to cut a deal with someone who might be better at it than I.

Six hundred dollars is a substantial sum of money, more than I was willing to pay. Why? Because I have a fixed supply of money coming in each month, and that supply just barely meets the demands of our household. There is no room in the budget for an unplanned $600 expense.

And yet, it took me 8 hours to get a third of the job done. Assuming that I improve some, I could get the rest of the job done in 12 hours. That's 20 hours total, meaning that for every hour I work, I save myself $30.

Looking at it another way, I earn $30 per hour for my labor moving concrete.

The guys I spoke with on the phone said they would get the job done with a crew of two guys in 6 hours. That's 12 hours total, or about $50 per hour.

Hmmm....

On the Rootfop

2008-10-20T20:47:00.000-07:00

My neighbor Sjell was kind enough to come over and help fix a leak in my roof today. While we were up there we had one of those classic Seattle moments, when the sun finally breaks out of the clouds just before setting, and lights up everything with a golden glow.

So, I got my camera and took some pictures. Later I stitched them together into a single panaroma with a handy program called autostitch.

Derivative Regulation Contest Entry

2008-10-13T22:05:00.001-07:00
Its looking like one of the most certain things to come out of this financial crisis is more regulation. I have spent a fair amount of time imagining how derivatives would be regulated.

Looking at the extremes, "outlawing" derivatives seems reasonable to consider. Assuming that this is enforceable, it would surely meet with lots of resistance from Wall Street. Discredited as it is, Wall Street still has most of the money, and most of the ears of our representatives.

It is my impression that laws like this often don't work. Companies have incentives to find ways to get around them, and will do so, just like people find ways around other prohibited, but attractive, activities. And there are all sorts of things that derivatives can provide that are useful in certain situations. If they are banished outright, I could imagine an underground economy that trades them.

Here is another idea.

The government could require that all financial companies publish their coefficients of risk. This data would be made available by the banks, to the government, daily. Since this is in the public trust, the numbers would have to be available publicly. That is, the banks would make public heretofore private information.

A consortium would be formed that would
choose a risk model
determine the important attributes and measurements to be reported
create a "reference implementation" that measures, calculates, stores, and publishes the risk data of the banks. In addition suites of acceptance tests that would validate other implementations
create another reference implementation that collates the daily data as reported from all the banks, and plugs it in to a meta-risk model that balances the risk of the banks together
choose limits on acceptible values for the bank's reported risk coefficients. This would include values derived from the data of a single bank. If a bank reported values that violated thes ranges, then the bank would suffer a penalty of some sort. The penalty should be substantial (such as losing management control) to discourage risky behavior.

The software would be freely available in source code form. All interfaces would be public. Thse data would be freely available via web services, hosted by the federal government. Anyone could read the interface documentation and create a web application.

Open source, open data, this makes sense since it is a public risk that is being regulated, like levels of Carbon emissions. Encourage other countries to use the software and contribute to its development.

A high profile government sponsored open source software project of this magnitude and this importance would attract the best minds in the country. Just in case the open source development model does not work for getting the project done, though, the government could also solicit bids for alternate implementations. Several companies could be hired to implement the project. There could even be a contest to create the best implementation.

In fact the whole project could be a contest. Offer a million dollar prize to the best proposal for a system to essentially manage the risk of the nations financial system.

So here's my entry.

Thumbs up on the tea-tree oil, dad!

2008-09-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

There was a lice outbreak at school this week. I don't want to nit-pick, but I was one of the parents who was called in to take my child home.

On the way home from school, we stopped at the Herbalist, an apothecary in the northeast part of town (I think it's Ravenna, but maybe Wedgewood). Along with Tea Tree shampoo, I picked up a bottle of hair oil - jojoba and almond infused with rosemary, lavender, tea-tree, bay, and sage. It is wonderful stuff.

We did a "treatment" at home, which consisted of soaking her hair in the oil overnight, washing thoroughly in the morning, and then about 1 hour of combing and seeking, seeking and combing. I didn't find anything, and was even wondering (nay, suspecting) that the staff at school had made a mistake.

This morning we went to school, and D. from the office found 6 nits. I didn't remember them being THAT small! They were tiny, but unlike the random other specs in there, these were unmistakeably attached to a hair. I was a little embarrassed that I had not found them myself. D. showed me how to do it, and now I know, and will try to remember this time.

With Apologies to Bremerton

2008-09-17T21:56:00.000-07:00
Remember the "new economy"? More importantly, do you remember when that notion of ever-increasing equity prices was kicked in the nuts by reality in the dot-com bust? Yeah, I forgot about that one too.

But I recognize the feeling, the "something doesn't feel quite right" feeling that I had as real-estate prices soared in the first half of this decade. The easy home-equity credit that we landed allowed us to put a new kitchen our 4 bedroom Seattle fixer, rather than move to Bremerton for something equivalent (for those who don't know, Bremerton is the Newark of the Pacific Northwest). It also apparently fueled demand for houses, condos, co-ops, and coops, pushing up prices.

That something ain't quite right feeling is getting some reinforcement today, with the Fed's bailout of AIG, the bankruptcy of Shearson ... er... Lehman, and the sale of Merrill Lynch to BofA. The market down 1000 or so points in two days. Pretty grim. One of the grimmest that I recall.

Several notable recessions were preceded by prolonged periods of easy credit, leading to euphoria in the financial markets, and ended by sudden and sever downturns. The 1873 recession, the great depression, for example. We should have recognized it again this time, but it is soo hard to see the unpleasant truths when everything is going up up up!

Apparently, sub prime mortgages started to have delinquency problems in early 2005, about the same time that home prices started to taper off. Funny, the stock market did not register much of a response to this until 2007, two years later. At that time, a small number of financial institutions halted redemptions in their funds because they were having difficulty valuing the complex fund assets.

These complex assets, or structured finance products, were originally thought to mitigate risk. I remember as an options trader, making markets for counter parties who were seeking to offset some underlying risk in their portfolio with straight-up currency options. It worked for them. However, while options are complex and difficult to value, the "structured" instruments issued against pools of mortgages were way more complicated.

At the time they were issued, they seemed great. So great that their inherent risks seemed nonexistant. So great that having them on your balance sheet was as good as cash or government bonds. So great that Moodys and Standard & Poors might give you a triple-A-plus.

But, once the underlying asset went down (e.g. the steady stream of mortgage payments), so too these asset tanked.

In retrospect now I think that all the inflation we have seen in the last few years - oil, food, concrete - was fueled not by China's insatiable demand, but rather by an excess of money. An excess of money fueled by super-easy credit, and secured by the ability of regular Joes to make mortgages payments on houses with crazy prices.

I hope that all the regular Joes out there are doing OK. It's not their fault. I don't even think its the government's fault, or the banks fault. It's a phenomena.

And, as Einstein said... er, well, read the previous post.

Note: I leaned heavily on the BIS 78th Annual Report for this post.

Great Einstein Quote

2008-09-15T21:39:00.000-07:00
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Scraponomics

2008-09-09T22:44:00.000-07:00
My '91 Jeep Cherokee is stuck in reverse. The clutch has been giving me problems for a while - I really should have brought it in a few weeks ago. But, I didn't, and on Saturday I shifted into reverse, and it never came back out.

Anyway, tonight I called a tow-er, and he came by with his big, noisy diesel rig. With some help from my neighbor, we pushed the jeep up into onto the bed. Then I jumped into the cab and we headed on down to the clutch shop.

On the way there we talked about various things. He works for a scrap yard by day, and by night he tows cars to earn some extra cash. I told him that I had just sold my son's wrecked Lebaron, and was surprised at how many people called who were interested in scrapping it.

"Hell yeah" he said. "Why this jeep of yours would have been worth $700 at the scrap yard a few months ago. That's just for the steel - the catalytic converter and the aluminum hubs would have added another $300"

Wow! I only paid $2000 a few years ago for this jeep. My loss from depreciation is theoretically maxed out at 50%, as long as the market for raw materials holds.

Turns out that the scrap market has plummeted in the last few months. The reason? The recently completed 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Japan (maybe he meant China) apparently is the primary purchaser of scrap metal from Washington to Montana, and they stopped all the steel mill activity prior to the Olympics in order to clear the air a bit. With the chief buyer out of the market, prices have plummetted.

Ultralight Backpacking

2008-09-03T00:12:00.000-07:00
Some years ago I was attending the closing potluck for my then 10-year-old son's wilderness camp. The camp was put on by Wilderness Awareness school in Duvall, WA. If I understand correctly, this school is an offshoot of the work of Tom Brown, author of The Tracker and other books. If you have read Tom's works, you know that as a youth he was educated by an Apache elder in the ways of the wilderness.

Anyway, on this particular occasion I was picking up my son after a week of learning wilderness skills. There was a potluck, and I took the chance to talk to one of the instructors. We chatted a bit about the camp, the program, the beauty of the wilderness, etc. Wishing to show that I had some experience in the wilderness, I fondly recalled (out loud) my experiences backpacking on the East Coast and British Columbia. After a few moments I paused.

There was a curious look on the counsellors face. He must have been about 15 years younger than me, but his next comment showed who was the wiser. "Yeah, I used to backpack a lot myself" he said. "Eventually I came to realize that all I was doing was carrying the world around in my pack. So I ditched it."

"Oh, so you've stopped camping" I asked?

"Oh no, I still go camping. All the time. But now I leave the backpack at home, where it can't get between me and the wilderness. I build shelter when I need it, and forage for food."

Wow, did I feel like a chump.

Still do, actually. I love the wilderness. I love nature. I have loved it ever since I was a kid, when I used to spend hours in the woods near our house. Huck Finn was my childhood hero - I used to dream of living in caves and makeshift shelters on river banks just like Huck.

In fact, I secretly vowed that some day I would retake my youthful dreams and make a trip to the wilderness with nothing but my clothes, and see how I would survive.

Well, a more practical version of that dream came a little closer to realization tonight, thanks to a story about "Ultralight Backpacking." In this story the author tells how one hike for days on end in the wilderness with nothing but a small pack that weighs a total of 15 pounds. Sounds great - I'll let you know when I do it!

2008-08-26T23:35:00.000-07:00
Today, like many days that I drive to work, I had to pause at Safeco Field as the commuter train passed by. In the back seat my two dogs Tula and Sweety shared the experience of waiting for the train. I turned off the engine and tried to look inside the windows of the passing Dining, Sleeping, and Coach cars. Silouettes of people standing up and stretching reminded me of similar moments when I was inside the train myself.

I had to leave Tula and Sweety in the back of my jeep, while I went in to write code at work. I think that Tula and Sweety do not mind. They are always happy to see me come back to the car, which I do a few times during the day to take them on a walk.

Miracle on NW 79th Street

2008-08-24T12:23:00.000-07:00
There was a beautiful display last Sunday in the early evening. There had been a rainstorm, and just before the sun set, a magnificent double rainbow appeared. Even more amazing, you can see from this photo that it actually sprouts from the steeple at St. John's catholic church up the street!

Awesome Display of Chinese Dominance

2008-08-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

While I didn't see the opening ceremonies of the Olympics this summer, I did hear a lot about them. I guess they were quite a spectacle. While one friend called them "terrifying", others were less impressed, observing that one could do a lot with $50 mil.

Anyway, the chatter reminded me of an image I had seen before, of the Chinese putting on a great display of uniformity and cooperation that was surely just as powerful in its day, and definitely did not cost $50 mil. I hunted for the image, and eventually found it in Arthur Toynbee's great work "A Study of History" - this is the 1 volume version with lots of pictures, not the 12 volume unabridged version.

Here is the caption:
The new society? Athletic display in Modern China: Westerners tend to see in China a repulsive modern Leviathan, but behind the ceremonial lies an ideal of mutual solidarity and co-operation from which a fragmented world may learn.

Rainbarrel PSI Issues

2008-08-16T18:56:00.000-07:00
There are some things I need to know about how water is used. Like, how much pressure (PSI) is needed to run sprinklers, appliances, faucets, etc. Also, what are some valid techniques for achieving that pressure. For example, if I put my 55 gallon rainbarrel on a tree stump, will I be able to run a sprinkler?

I found a helpful article at http://www.howstuffworks.com/water.htm, and I learned this:
Each foot of height provides 0.43 PSI (pounds per square Inch) of pressure
A typical municipal water supply runs at between 50 and 100 PSI
Major appliances require at least 20 to 30 PSI
That means I would need a 45 foot tree stump!

2008-08-09T18:01:00.000-07:00

It is the middle of summer here now, and as usual it has been quite dry. It happened to rain pretty hard today, however, overflowing my 55 gallon rain barrel quickly.

My wife and I are in the process of turning our home in Seattle into a sustainable urban homestead. I decided this morning that I would document this process in my blog. You can expect to see pictures, plans, and hopefully some progress over the coming months.

In Seattle we do receive an awful lot of water from the sky. However, there are a few months in the summer when it is very hot and sunny. People water their lawns, their gardens, etc. A full rain barrel can easily be depleted within a few days if used as a primary watering source.

Water from the city ain't cheap, so I would like to use this rainwater during the dry months. But how to store, how to collect, these are questions that must be answered.

am i imified?

2008-05-14T10:46:00.001-07:00

This is the coolest little app I hafe found in a while - it allows me to post to blogs, delicious, etc. from my google-talk app. No longer do I have to log on to blogger or whatever when I find somethjgin I want to save - I can just IM it!

2008-02-28T09:12:00.000-08:00
On the way to school yesterday, my daughter and I noticed a big crane sitting in front of a house. Today, the crane was still there, but the house was gone.

"Look Daddy, the house is gone. Why did they do that?"
"I think they knocked down the house so they could build apartments."

My daughter paused for a second, thoughtful. And then she spoke her thoughts about the whole business.

"That's mean."

Player	Supply	Demand	Notes
BOARD	x	x
HEADHUNTER	x
INTERNAL CANDIDATES	x
BOARD ASSOCIATES	x
COMPENSATION COMITTEE		x

Scraps

idealist.org

cleaing up my windows computer

personalized search scraps

Set List @ Egan’s Jam House

twittering might be quicker

Dwolla

New Chicks

Finally Ditching Quicken

Start Your Own Currency

Bitcoin

The Man Who Stopped the Desert

Cedar Hot Tubs

Founder of MicroLendeing Speaks out on it's Decline

Good Books on Economics

Jobs vs Land

Performance Art Opportunity

The Khan Academy

Permaculture at Pine Ridge

Example of Girl's Internet Chain Mail

Glowing story about capitalism saving the poor

Unstructured Work

The Case for Sustainable Meat

On the suitability of growing your own food...

Greenwood Arsonist pleads Guilty

Pictures of a cool Rocket Oven

Alice Miller dies

Online SAT Prep Courses

Maybe this website will help

Organized Home

Now here's a great idea

Remote Place - Tristan da Cunha

Getting away from it all

Malcolm McLaren dead

PERMACULTURE CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES: A LEXICON

ORM - influencing search suggest sublistings

Governing the Commons

Beautiful Oven Stoves

Search Engine Suggestions Optimzation (SESO)

Aquaponics

Avoid Credid Card fees when travelling aborad

TreeCrops

John Forde's Bank

Sometimes I learn about fascinating people only when they die

No More Plastic

Some Observations in a Story About Farm Runoff

How Easy Credit Fuels Housing Bubble

Buying Land

Spuds

Who is riling these people up?

Global Warming a Threat to National Security

My New Presentation Tool

Credit Crisis Visualation

Return from Camp

Landmark on Speedometer

Organic Scalability

Strawberries!

A Girl and her Dog

Bubble in College Tuitions?

Composting Doggy Doo Do

Baobab

Holy Cow

Italian K2 Conqueror Dies

Lead in Urban Gardens

Liars Poker author calls "The End of Wall Street"

Composting Wisdom

Pirates

Edible Forest Gardens in 45 minutes

Executive Pay solution in 45 minutes

Promising resournce on permaculture design in the west coast

Is it worthwhile to plant wheat in a 12'x2' strip?

Putin Blames Capitalists for Crisis

Vegetable Garden at the White House

Git on, Gitmo

Where art thou, Polonius?

Obama increases government transparency

The Military Industrial Perrenial Polyculture Complex

Speculation is merely one aspect of what happened...

Are antibiotics bad for you? Hope not...

Snowmen

Organized
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