LINKS: August 12, 2011
Some items of interest:
- Home made Bedazzler for $250 in parts (DIY plans and code available). Basically, it is a non-lethal weapon that uses flashing lights to make people sea-sick. From the archives.
- 7 Rules for Building a Front Yard Garden by Devin. Here's the problem in a nutshell. To make your home resilient, you need to make it productive. A source of production rather than consumption. It will not only allow you to become more independent, it will in the long run, radically increase the value of your property. The difficulty is that many people are still stuck in the past. They believe that homes should only be ornamental/decorative and will resist any improvements you make to improve your resilience (particuarly front yard gardens on small plots). Here are some ideas on how to work around their opposition.
- Interesting interview (Margaret Levenstein) on how income specuation (driven by income concentration) led to the deindustrialization of Cleveland just before the first Depression.
- Riot Rebuild. Architects, handymen, construction companies come together in the face of riots. "Think of it as Guerrilla Gardening for the urban environment."
- National Ecological Observatory Network. Goal is to"Systematically monitor the environment on a continental scale." 15,000 sensors, aerial mapping, and satellite imagery to supply data across 500 categories (air, stream, weather). Data will be "open and free."
- 3D Printing competition. Win cash for submitting the "most creative and innovative" CAD model. 10x10x10in limit.
- Ultra-thin polymer medical sensors. "These devices connect to skin without adhesives, are practically unnoticeable, and can even be attached via temporary tattoo."
- 20% of Iowa's electricity comes from wind.
Posted by Shlok Vaidya on Friday, 12 August 2011 at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Thursday, 11 August 2011
LINKS: August 11, 2011
Some random items of interest:
- Grant put up a generic first aid kit page. If you have specific recipes for first aid kits, please put them up here.
- Ash found another resilient car: The Isuzu Rodeo.
- Skillshare is expanding. Micro education.
- Some great/open DIY solar ideas. Would love to see some of these xferred to MiiU.
- Permaculture. This is a VERY important topic to resilience. It's the way resilient communities will get much of the food they eat in the future since it replaces work/energy with smart system design. We're going to set up a complete directory (as complete as we can make it) for plants and animal species that can be used in permaculture gardens. If you can help, dive in. MiiU's planning to fund some of it and get other funding for the rest. If you think that is a good idea +1 this page (I'm using Google + as a way to run an informal poll). Also, +1 any other pages you find useful there. The more +1s in a given area, the easier it is to decide what we should work on next.
- Oklahoma. Natural gas pipeline + bomb.
- How Non-Violence Protects the State. Free e-book. Interesting for those of you interested in insurgency.
- More on Anon vs. Facebook. "We don't 'kill' the messenger. That's not our style." Open source warfare theory specifically prohibits taking down communications networks. Why? It damages the ability of the insurgency to operate at a high tempo. In contrast, Governments shut down communications networks when they are in trouble.
- The indisputable end of the McMansion era by Coley Hudgins.
- Guerrilla phone charging tip from Syria. OMAR MAQUAD: We got a problem with the batteries because our batteries are running out, and no electric to recharge your equipment. So, for phone calls, we create a new way. It's actually simple way to recharge your phone. We used to -- a glass of water with two batteries Duracell or something else. This already exists everywhere. We use it, keep the batteries in the water for one hour or 30 minutes. Then you put the USB adapters inside the water and start charge. That's how we charge the mobiles. From PBS interview (worth watching).
- Atlantic: Can the Middle Class be Saved? Great article. Starts with Citigroup's Plutonomy report (the report has been ruthlessly removed from the Web by Citi's lawyers) -- wherein they show that, in the US, the middle class doesn't really exist. In reality, there are only two groups, a small percentage of rich households (that drive all consumption and investment) and the rest (that live hand to mouth). The last time this happened (in the 1920s) a global depression was the inevitable result
- Atlantic. Housing crisis still haunting US.
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