Mark Mulkerin's Blog – March 2010 Archive (18)

With almost ten thousand files uploaded and over twenty two thousand pages, I encourage anyone with an interest in appropriate technologies for local solutions to various challenges to look at Appropedia, http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia.



In their own words - "Appropedia is the site for collaborative solutions in sustainability,… Continue

Fun? Alchemy wants something fun? In the Himalayas, China, India, and Pakistan have armies staring at each other over dwindling ice fields. The high plains in the US are in the process of drying up and blowing away. In monsoon prone cities from Manila to Mumbai, residents have taken to putting boats on their roofs for the inevitable flooding. OPEC has been replaced by the Organization of Water Exporting Countries. And the dwindling few with enough money and self-delusion are still buying… Continue

There are lots of water issues and lots of craziness around water, but as someone interested in sustainable agriculture one drives me particularly nuts. For the most part in the Western United States, water use law is a complex patchwork of competing water rights. While it seems unlikely and even unfair to take water rights away from a farmer or others as they have economic value and would destroy livelihoods, the practice of use it or lose it as enshrined in various states including where I… Continue

Sure, there are so many great emerging water technologies - drip irrigation and conservation tillage, hippodrums making it easier to retrieve water, recharging aquifers with excess rain, grey water systems, saltwater adapted crops, life straws, desalinization plants, solar and ceramic water purifiers, and many more. Yet my choice is the humble rain barrel?



Where is the innovation in that?



Awareness. How would your water use change, if you could see your supply rise and fall… Continue

As some may know, I've been playing devil's advocate in Jen Shaffer's conversation provoking blog, Conflict in my Evoke?. I've shared some of my views on why I think regulating away "gaming the system" or competition doesn't work for me in the comments of that blog; however, at Amos Meeks' suggestion, I'm going to spin off one of my thoughts into a new blog -… Continue

We are pretty energy aware to begin with. We turn off lights when we leave the room. We leave in the tropics, but almost always use just the fans. We bought energy efficient appliances. We even boil my wife's water for tea or coffee in the electric kettle rather than do it on the stove and then put any extra in a thermos to keep it hot.



What more can we do? As the song says, PAINT IT BLACK! Okay, I'm not going to paint the electric kettle black or the thermos since that would be… Continue

Okay, okay, I should be getting ready for Christmas, but the shopping channel is the shopping channel and I don't have gifts for everyone. The big thing this year is piezoelectric everything since a certain organization that we won't talk about made the break through in cost and materials. So I'm watching this guy who is disturbing on about eighty different levels and he has these little sticker things placed randomly about his body. I want to change the channel or pluck my eyes out, but… Continue

"Alchemy called. Tokyo," I said as I rinsed the winter greens. I shook them off.

"How bad is it?" asks K, my sixteen year old daughter as she runs the knife over the steel to true the edge.

"Bad enough that Alchemy called ... people expect food shortages in… Continue

Hunter Gatherer



Old woman pushes slowly down the aisle

gathering the night's scroungings.

Her hands, scuffed,

cracked as kitchen linoleum,

roam over tender tomatoes,

probe eggplants for hidden softness,

heft potato and onion, know their weight.



Once, she owned the secret of seasons -

the two weeks, peaches would explode on her tongue,

the rhythm of rutabaga, radishes.



She pauses at the apples, picks one,

holds it near as if learning… Continue

American Dreams

Frozen, blank concrete won't hold his words;

even his mind no longer hears him,

only receives the slur of an…

Continue

Final Refrains to My Descendants - Circa. 2054

Sing the dying

time of grandchildren unborn

through broken,…

Continue

Demographics

"It's market research,"

the older tells the younger,…

Continue

My family has actually started down this road having bought a struggling, small farm in Wisconsin. Even though our background isn't farming, we wanted to put our resources where our passions are and took the plunge - sort of. Since we live abroad, we have partnered with the previous owners to keep the farm going and get things on a solid financial footing.



While they get crops in the ground and create value-added farm products to sell in regional co-ops, I'm working on the business… Continue

Picking my favorite renewable energy is like picking my favorite kid - of course, if we could power the world with their energy and propensity for climbing and other naughtiness, we'd be somewhat closer to an energy balance but ... Continue

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2020 - I want to be a Luddite. Kurzweill was right. My computer does have the same computing capacity as a human brain now. Unfortunately, it has a very disagreeable personality - think, know it all with no attention span. It is constantly commenting on my writing or video messaging and since it still doesn't understand metaphors or sarcasm, it is constantly trying to correct me. It took me twenty minutes to send a reply to Evoke about Tokyo. I'm still trying to figure out what we can do to… Continue

Okay, it is a bit odd shadowing the creator of a game that instructed you to shadow someone ... but I wouldn't be giving it a spin if I hadn't watched Ms. McGonigal's (if she accepts the Facebook friend request, I will feel I can use her first name) TED Talk. Continue

What is a school? What is a library? How do we educate our children and ourselves? In the developed world, the answer has been state supported public schools and colleges with more expensive private options for those who can afford filled with teachers, books, and lunch ladies. It is industrial education requiring the machinery of learning, the assembly lines of knowledge, and the raw materials to process. In less developed countries, this option is out of reach for many as even the seemingly… Continue