Well, it certainly has been a while hasn’t it. You see, this whole “blog” began because a few friends wanted to do at least something to help influence their world for the better. We had some things to say, we had interests we wanted to share, and we wanted an excuse to do some digging, researching, and uncovering. And in todays world its ever easier to share oneself with the rest of the world. If you have access to a computer and the internet, you can acquire everything you need to publish your own book, or even movie…

Open Office:
” alt=”Open Office” />

first, lose the old Microsoft Office programs you may be using and download yourself the OpenOffice Suite here. Open office contains a powerpoint type program, an spreadsheet program, but more importantly, a nice MS Word compatable word-processing program. Use this free program to write that amazing book you’ve been putting off…but you’re going to need some images won’t you?

Gimp:
” alt=”The Gimp” />

Next, download Gimp here. Gimp is a great image manipulation program that is extremely versatile and comparable to photoshop, and possibly illustrator. It can save in both raster and vector formats, and I’ve used it to make animated gifs for my own website

Now that you’ve written your book, and created all the images necessary, you’re going to have to put it together in a publishable format…

Scribus:
” alt=”Scribus” />

Now, just download Scribus here. Scribus is an open source free desktop publisher, which helps you layout your book in a nice professional way. I’ve used Scribus to put together a couple of my small comics…One of which is here.
” alt=”Genesis” />
But wait, where are you going to publish this book, and how are you going to get an ISBN and all that stuff?

Lulu:
” alt=”Lulu” />

Lulu is a great way for you to publish that book. It’s an online on-demand publisher that even helps set you up with an official ISBN and barcode for the cover.

Well, now that you’ve written your book, complete with graphics, and published it on Lulu, all that’s left is for everyone to buy it and learn everything you have to offer. Thanks for being so great.

Lucy.

Sorry for this horrible post. I’ve just watched two people I hate on tv: Katie Couric and George W. Bush.

I hate Katie Couric because she sounds patronizing and uncaring. She asked George Bush a question and then laughed as she said, “You can take the man out of Crawford, but you can’t take the, (he he he) Crawford out of the man.” I’m not sure if she knows her current events, but there is no Crawford in that man, he grew up in Connecticut.

I hate Katie Couric Yahoo Group

I hate George Bush because he smiles the most and almost laughs when he says things like, “The war on terror will be the focus of the 21st Century.” Now, I’m not saying it won’t, but I find it odd that this guy’s biggest smile sweeps across his face when he says this sentence, as if he and his friends may have something to gain from this idea…oh wait a second…

I hate Bush Site on Yahoo Groups

A couple months ago, some of the editors of this blog convened on a small island off the Eastern Coast of the USA. At some point, someone claimed that they heard on NPR that within the next few months, scientists would come out with a conclusion that will totally change everything we know about a particular subject in science. The trouble was, either NPR didn’t say, or our fellow editor couldn’t remember which field of science this revelation would affect.

I guessed it would be time travel, something involving worm holes.

But could it be Earth Science? Neal Adams, a professional animator and big name in the comics world, poses an incredible theory on an alternative idea to Pangea. First, watch the video on this link. If you have a slow browser, you might not want to skip this part…but if you have high speed, dude, watch this video

In case you have slow speed, I’ll reiterate the idea below, using Neal Adams’ illustrations of how the continents spread out the way they did:

This is how our Earth looks now.

We all know that the Eastern edge of the Americas lines up with the Western edge of Africa and Europe…

But what if all the other edges met too?

That would mean that our Earth was much smaller before, and as it grew, the continents spread out…If you’re still not sure about this theory, watch all of the other videos here
And listen to his recent radio interview here

Seeing if I could replicate the process very roughly, I printed out a small map of the Earth’s Continents:

I cut out the land masses, and tried to create a whole Earth, with no Oceans. Here’s what I got:

Not the greatest, but I’m working with paper which, while there is give, there is little room for the little maneuvers that a large land mass would have.

this not only works for Earth (putting the land masses together to form a smaller sphere) but from the videos linked to above, you learn that it also works for our moon, Mars, and other planetary objects.

Have you ever wondered why people claim that income taxes are illegal, or why people would want to refrain from paying their taxes in the first place? I mean, don’t our income taxes go towards providing schooling, health care and other social programs?

The answer from Aaron Russo (Producer of The Rose, Trading Places, and Teachers) may make you want to do your own research into this realm. For instance, the 16th amendment (which allows the IRS to demand that people pay income taxes) was created the same year that the Federal Reserve Act was passed. Is there a relationship between the two, and is it possible that the reason for us paying our income taxes is to pay off interest to the “FED”, interest that if our government printed its own money we wouldn’t even owe?

And was the 16th Amendment actually ratified? Didn’t the Supreme Court declare that collecting income taxes was illegal since the 16th Amendment was never ratified?

If you’re curious about these questions (or their answers) click on the image above to see where you can see the new movie “From Freedom to Fascism” by Aaron Russo.

Once a Day is back from Vacation…Hope everyone’s well rested and ready for more Blaahhhging.

I’m working on a theory: We’re all involved in a cult where its perfectly normal to sacrafice our time to the gods of “Work”. I started putting this together in the middle of a hellacious work-week where I put in over 90 extra hours within a week and a half. I started feeling resentful that I had to get up early every morning and return home late every night, rarely seeing my spouse and my cat. Then I started wondering why I do it even when I’m not working extra. Why am I sacraficing so many hours of my day?

The Answer: I’ve been involved in a job-cult ever since the day I was born; I’ve been brainwashed with kiddie books and quotations about the merits of having a job, and how there’s no way that humans could live without them. Think back to how often adults used to ask you what you were going to be when you grew up, as if you weren’t anything or anyone as a child, without that “job”. I have had the mantra “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” quoted to me so often I began to believe it was true. So instead of sacraficing babies on an alter to our pagan gods, we instead sacrafice our precious days to the god of “Job”.

So, among the many goals in my life, I’ve added a new one: Figure out how humanity can thrive without “jobs”. Who’s with me?

So, I just found out that Jesus didn’t exist.

Also, Christianity is all built on lies and falsehoods.

(Okay, this is all speculation. But visit the site, see the movie and tell me what YOU think.)

You can even view the trailor here: The God Who Wasn’t There

- The early founders of Christianity seem wholly unaware of the idea of a human Jesus

- The Jesus of the Gospels bears a striking resemblance to other ancient heroes and the figureheads of pagan savior cults

- Contemporary Christians are largely ignorant of the origins of their religion

- Fundamentalism is as strong today as it ever has been, with an alarming 44% of Americans believing Jesus will return to earth in their lifetimes

Sorry for posting on someone else’s day, and for posting right after my own day, I hope today’s real poster feels free to post anyway, but on my way home last night I read a passage out of a book called, “The Roots of War” by Richard J. Barnet, former State Department official from the Kennedy Administration.

From 1965 to 1968 the Pentagon reported the destruction of the whole Vietcong force more than once. Even allowing for official US exaggeration, the actual number of enemy deaths was enormous. but the implications of the fact that the Vietnamese were ready to die on a vast scale rather than give up were clouded in official ignorance. No one at the top knew or considered it important that the Vienamese had been fighting foreign invaders for almost two thousand years. No one understood the depth of their nationalist feeling. The official explanation inside the Pentagon was that Vietnamese value life cheaply and are accustomed to dying in droves. The implication of this racist analysis, with its connotations of human waves, yellow hordes, and kamikazes, is that they are exceedingly dangerous people and deserve to be killed in even greater numbers.

These words were written in 1971, and obviously can still be applied to the way the US administration dehumanizes and villifies our “enemy” today…

Hey, also, they just released video for the first time that shows the plane hitting the Pentagon. This was a FOIA request, and I suppose will also quench the talk about how we still haven’t seen any evidence of a “plane” hitting the pentagon: No pictures, video, or images of any plane wreckage at all. Really, if there is I’d like to know. So this new video release should stop those conspiracy nuts…although they showed the video on the news a couple nights ago, and…I still didn’t see the plane…did you?

Well, as you might suppose, according to this tract…It IS!!!

I was in Scarsdale, NY today and went into the diner near the train station and saw all these things that looked like advertisements for theaters, amusement parks and what not. Then I looked closer and saw references to God, Jesus and other biblical stuff. At first I thought there were merely a few mixed in with the other 50 or 60 advertisements. Then, no, they’re all about Religion. So I grabbed about 30 to see what they were about. Some were amusing, some were really boring:

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The one on the end, called “She said Yes” was written “as Cassie might have told it”. You see, she died in the Columbine High School shootings. She was the girl who was asked by a shooter, “Do you believe in God?” She said “yes”. And this tract is a fictional letter presented to as if Cassie wrote it herself, after the Columbine incident.

But, one of these tracts got to me. After the 50th or 60th time reading how “Someone had to pay for our sins, and God loved us so much that he sent his only son as the sacrificial lamb in our steads,” I realized something. There’s someone else whom God must be obeying…

Think about it. It’s drilled in our heads how God had to send his only son to be offered up as a sacrafice for our sins, but to whom was God sacrificing his son? Normally, mortals sacrafice to the gods. In this case, the God that people worshiped sacraficed his son, but to whom? Not to himself, that would just be silly.

And why did God demand a sacrafice? Normally if someone decides against something, that person can change his or her mind. If God decided that humans must make a sacrafice to atone for original sin, and then decided that he loved humans too much to actually make them sacrafice, you would think that God would say, “okay, I was wrong, you guys don’t have to sacrafice yourselves.” Instead, God decides that someone must still pay the price and sacrafice something, so he sends his only son to do the job. This sounds like it wasn’t God who wanted the sacrafice in the first place…Its beginning to sound like God is just the middleman.

So I’m proposing a new religion: Let’s not worship the middle-man, let’s worship the more powerful being behind the middle man, you know, the guy who actually makes the demands for sacrafices…Or, um, wait a minute. A secret being who demands human sacrafices…oh no…could the being who commands the God of the old testament really be…could it be….Satan?

Don’t worry, next week will include current news and commentary. I’m just laying down some background.

A couple of months ago I sitting on the Witness for Peace porch in Managua Nicaragua learning about US involvement in the country for the last 150 years or so. The first event we covered was when a US citizen, William Walker (pictured above), led a group of mercenaries into Nicaragua and took over the country. Remember from two weeks ago, the State Department said,

Initially invited by the Liberals in 1855 to join their struggle against the Conservatives, an American named William Walker and his “filibusters” seized the presidency in 1856. The Liberals and Conservatives united to drive him out of office in 1857.

Just a side note, the US government at the time recognized his presidency as legitamate. This is something I’ve been noticing lately, when the US recognizes governments.

Aside from wanting to be supreme ruler, we were told that this guy was in a race against the Vanderbuilts to establish a canal through Central America. At this time, lots of people were trying to establish a water route from the East Coast of the US to the West Coast. Here’s a map of the US at this time, the pink indicates “settled territory”:

Notice the big gap in the middle.

So after William Walker, the history of the US and Nicaragua grow together because of the US marines and US businesses. The US businesses set up what become known as “Bannana Republics”, and the US marines are continually sent in to keep Nicaraguans from running their own country (more or less). Of course, “uprisings” and “US interests” were continually brought up as reasons to invade, er, I mean, keep the peace.

As I grew more angy with every piece of US meddlement in Nicaragua, I kept thinking, “we should get the fuck out and stay out and let them have their country back.” And then I realized exactly how similar US history and Nicaragua history is, and how foggy my role as a US citizen is.

The reason that the area in the middle of the map of the US above isn’t settled is the same reason why US citizens were invading Central American Countries to create a water passage from coast to coast. The people who lived in that “unsettled” place in the US didn’t want the white man invading their territories and displacing them. In fact, the Indigenous people who lived there fought off the white man so well, many of them decided to look for a way “around” them. Hence, the search for the central american canal.

So as the US was invading Nicaragua and setting up their own governments abroad, they were doing the exact same thing on their “own” soil. Invading the people who lived in what is now the US, and setting up more favorable governments, with total disregard for the people who actually lived there.

And as US presence in Nicaragua today infuriates me, shouldn’t US presence on US land itself, Turtle Island, also infuriate me? Cause it kinda is starting to. Anyone Else?

Happy Birthday from your fellow Once-a-Dayers…

Two interesting conferences/gatherings coming up on opposite ends of the US of A:

HOPE 6: July 21, 22, 23 2006
New York City, NY
Hotel Pennsylvania

“HOPE” stands for “Hackers On Planet Earth” and their conference is once every two years. I went to the last one with my wife and it was the best 50 bucks I ever spent. It all starts Friday evening and goes non-stop, 24-7 till Sunday night. With two main conference rooms and a third for spontaneous events, as well as workshops mixed in wherever there’s carpet space, this conference is a must for anyone interested in computers, phones, technology, and most other things too.

For something completely different:

Feral Visions: August 4th - 13, 2006
Either in Arizona or New Mexico (site still being determined…)

Our goal is to help bring people into a wild environment, to break down mediation between oursleves and our world, and to encourage active participation with it. As in the past, the gathering will provide an introduction to the various strands of anti-civilization thought, as well as being an in-depth forum for discussing and developing theoretical and practical aspects of green anarchy.

Here’s some homework for next week. Read the Department of State fact page on Nicaragua, paying closer attention on the History section.

here’s the link

Here’s a few sentences to ponder over the next week:

Initially invited by the Liberals in 1855 to join their struggle against the Conservatives, an American named William Walker and his “filibusters” seized the presidency in 1856. The Liberals and Conservatives united to drive him out of office in 1857.

From 1927 until 1933, U.S. Marines stationed in Nicaragua engaged in a running battle with rebel forces led by renegade Liberal Gen. Augusto Sandino, who rejected a 1927 negotiated agreement brokered by the United States to end the latest round of fighting between Liberals and Conservatives.

After the departure of U.S. troops, National Guard Cmdr. Anastasio Somoza Garcia outmaneuvered his political opponents–including Sandino, who was assassinated by National Guard officers–and took over the presidency in 1936. Somoza and two sons who succeeded him, maintained close ties with the United States.

The Reagan administration provided assistance to the Nicaraguan resistance and in 1985 imposed an embargo on U.S.-Nicaraguan trade.

Have you ever wondered if it was possible for one plot of land to be self-sufficient? One organization in Nicaragua called CIPRES did, and they figured out that indeed it is possible. Not only that, but fairly easy. Here’s the plans:

And here’s the link:

http://www.cipres.org/ (it’s in Spanish)

So, what does that mean? Or at least, what does this mean for Lucy? This means that a family of humans can potentially live on two acres of land without ever having to import food or energy.

So, if everyone in the World (roughly 6,700,000,000 people) moved to the state of Texas, every single person would have about 1,090 SF of land to live on. Not much for a farm, I know.

But, if everyone in the US (roughly 295,700,000 people) moved to the state of Texas, every single person would have about 333,500 SF of land to live on…That’s more than 7.5 acres per person. Am I wrong, or does it seem as if there is plenty of land for everyone? And with this land that’s so plentiful, with the model shown above, comes lots of food to go around. It’s all just a matter of “doing” it.

Good luck with this Slingshot, I’ve actually been meaning to show this to you for a while. I’m thinking you’ll be into this.

Love,
Lucy

The young men in the photo above are (left to right) Luis and Hector. My wife and I stayed with them and their family for a few days last week, out in the countryside of Nicaragua. We asked our host brothers to show us somewhere cool and they brought us to this cliff (during the rainy season it’s a waterfall). As we walked to the site, Luis and Hector used a slingshot to shoot down fruit from trees. We snacked the whole way there.

When we arrived, we lay down on the rocks, looking out over a lagoon, rested and talked a little politics. I told Luis about an incident that ocurred earlier that day when our group of US citizens visited a cooperative farm (which our host father helped set up after the revolution). One of my fellow North Americans said to a founding member of the Co-op with sarcastic sentimentality,

So, my government was right when they told us you guys were communists. Because everything you’ve been saying so far, today, sounds like communism.

Luis laughed at that, and began talking about other countries that were communist. He mentioned Venezuela and I ventured that I thought Venezuela might be a democracy, and Luis said:

Communism is the same thing as Democracy.

I told Luis that in my country, many people equate capitalism with democracy, and he kind of shook his head and said something like, “that’s not true” or something.

But to explain what he meant by “communism”, I want to talk about the response to the statement made at the co-op. The leader of the Cooperative responded to the allegation of being a communist with the following paraphrase:

Yes, I am a communist. But I am not a communist so much in the political sense. I am a communist because God is a communist. Does God want us to live in constant fighting? Does God want us all to be against each other? No. God wants us all to live together in communion. And that is what we do. That is why I am called a communist.

Remember, these are the guys that Reagan warned us about. And it turns out that, unsurprisingly, people everywhere are really just the same. They want to live their lives on their own terms, in their own way, without anyone telling them otherwise. For many in the United States, this means a capitalist system. But for the family we stayed in, and for many of the other companeros and companeras in the countryside, that freedom to live the way they choose is synonymous with the cooperation and community lifestyle that we happen to define as “communism”.

As a kid growing up, I always thought the idea of managinig wildlife was a good idea. Now I really understand what the “management” in “Wildlife Management” really means. In this blog entry, we’ll specifically look at Idaho Fish & Game Wolf Management.
According to Idaho Fish & Game’s website:

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has proposed asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for permission to reduce the wolf population by up to 43 wolves or about 75 percent in the Lolo elk management zone of the Clearwater Region. Fish and Game biologists say wolf predation is a significant contributor to the decline of elk numbers in the Lolo zone and may be preventing population recovery. The proposal is made under the revised 10(j) rule of the Endangered Species Act, which took effect in February 2005, and allows removal of wolves having an unacceptable effect on elk and deer populations.

Now let’s look at the word “management”, from dictionary.com:

man·age
v. man·aged, man·ag·ing, man·ag·es
v. tr.

1. To direct or control the use of; handle: manage a complex machine tool.
2.
1. To exert control over: “Managing the news… is the oldest game in town” (James Reston). “A major crisis to be managed loomed on the horizon” (Time).
2. To make submissive to one’s authority, discipline, or persuasion.
3. To direct the affairs or interests of: manage a company; an agency that manages performers. See Synonyms at conduct.
4. To succeed in accomplishing or achieving, especially with difficulty; contrive or arrange: managed to get a promotion.

v. intr.

1. To direct or conduct business affairs.
2. To continue to get along; carry on: learning how to manage on my own.

Okay, so it looks like the word deals with exerting control, and carrying out business. But wait, the Idaho Fish & Game are concerned about the livelihood of the Elk right? Take a moment and go to their website if you want, and you’ll see that they are really concerned about the Elk population.

here’s a chart they provide to show how bad wolves are for the Elk:

and here’s another that shows how well off the wolves have it:

Hey, wait a minute, does that chart say “Removal objective”? You see, by “removal objective”, they really mean “killing objective”. It’s true, because that’s what they’re planning on doing. They clearly state that that’s what they’re going to do so I had to wonder why they feel the need to candy-coat it using a cute bar graph. Oh, could it be that maybe they’re not the animal lover’s you’d think that a Fish & Wildlife agency would be?

A little while ago I started to look to see how the dwindling Elk population was doing in Idaho, and I found this:

If you love elk hunting then we have the hunting trip for you! There is no better area for elk hunting than the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho and Clearwater National Park.

Keep in mind, this is the same Clearwater that the IF&G are considering killing wolves over in order to keep the Elk population at a decent level. Then I realized, it’s not called Idaho Fish and Wildlife (although there is a non-profit organization with that name, it is not related to the State agency), it is the Idaho Fish & GAME. And animals are only “game” when they’re hunted, which is really only a game for one of the parties involved.

Now, hunting only really bothers me when people use the unfair traps and high-tech rifles. What really irks me here is state santioned mass killing of animals that are indigenous to this country. And while the IF&G claim that its to protect the Elk, they’re really only protecting the Elk so that they can make money off of killing those same Elk. It’s game management in its truest form: managing animals as if they were a business, a commodity one had the right to excert control over.

In Boise Idaho, at a hearing concerning IF&G’s wolf-killing proposal, Nate Helm, executive director for Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, said the following:

Wolves, like all animals, should be managed. No one gets a free ride.

What? Is this guy for real? Did he really mean all animals, which would include humans? And since when do we consider animals living in the wild recieving a “free ride”? Do I hear the first hint at charging wild animals for rent?

Here’s more about Elk from an Elk hunting site:

At the turn of the century, commercial game hunters, hired riflemen and subsistence hunters had killed off most of the elk in the west. In1910, the U.S. Forest Service estimated that fewer than 1,000 elk remained in Colorado. The winters of 1897, 1909, 1911 and 1917, all coinciding with the loss of their traditional wintering grounds to cattle ranching, were also very tough on them.

So, who is actually to blame for dwindling populations of either Elk or Wolves…could it be…humans?

Mind Control may be weirder than you think:

Half of the world’s human population is infected with Toxoplasma. Parasites in the body - and the brain. Remember that. Toxoplasma gondii is a common parasite found in the guts of cats; it sheds eggs that are picked up by rats and other animals that are eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts in the bodies of the intermediate rat hosts, including the brain. Since cats don’t want to eat dead, decaying prey, Toxoplasma takes the evolutionarily sound course of being a “good” parasite, leaving the rats perfectly healthy. Or are they?

Oxford scientists discovered that the minds of the infected rats have been subtly altered. In a series of experiments, they demonstrated that healthy rats will prudently avoid areas that have been doused with cat urine. In fact, when scientists test anti-anxiety drugs on rats, they use a whiff of cat urine to induce neurochemical panic. However, it turns out that Toxoplasma-ridden rats show no such reaction. In fact, some of the infected rats actually seek out the cat urine-marked areas again and again. The parasite alters the mind (and thus the behavior) of the rat for its own benefit.

If the parasite can alter rat behavior, does it have any effect on humans? Dr. E. Fuller Torrey (Associate Director for Laboratory Research at the Stanley Medical Research Institute) noticed links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia in human beings, approximately three billion of whom are infected with T. gondii

read more

And there’s more news on weather altering science:

If you have ever seen a mysterious ball of lightning chasing a cow or flying through your window during a thunderstorm, take comfort from the fact that you have witnessed a very rare phenomenon. Indeed, ball lightning — a slow-moving ball of light that is occasionally seen at ground level during storms — has puzzled scientists for centuries. Now, however, researchers in Israel have built a system that can create lightning balls in the lab. The work may not only help us to understand ball lightning but could even lead to practical applications that make use of these artificial balls (Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 045002).

read more

Someday the U.S. military could drive a trailer to a spot just beyond insurgent fighting and, within minutes, reconfigure part of the atmosphere, blocking an enemy’s ability to receive satellite signals, even as U.S. troops are able to see into the area with radar.

read more

And see what Wired said about my favorite radio show, Coast to Coast:

An estimated 4.5 million listeners tune in to Coast to Coast each night, reportedly making the show No. 1 in its time slot in cities from Los Angeles to Albuquerque (where it gets a whopping 22 percent of the audience) to San Diego (where it attracts more listeners than the next two most popular stations combined).

One might assume mainstream scientists would steer clear of the show’s guest list of astrologers and psychics. In fact, many gainfully employed scientists and doctors make regular appearances.

Read More

When I was 5 years old I devised the idea of Eugenics to deal with the hungry and poor of Ethiopia. Luckily my mom told me that idea was horrible (hey, I was a kid, what did I know). In high school, I came up with an idea of government that my friend told me already existed: Communism. Now I’m older and I have better ideas, but they always seem to have already been done or invented. Here’s two of my original ideas that turns our are already being done. One new, one old:

Floating Island:

Since there are no parcels in the ocean, one could theoretically live on a boat. And if that boat had soil to grow food, one would never have to buy food. Combine this with the idea that many people throughout the world pay good money to visit beaches on tropical islands, and you come to the conclusion that Living on a floating island is the best idea in the world. I imagined that you’d have to grow it out of some type of moss, like how bogs are formed, then slowly add soil, beach grasses and then eventually to fruit trees. Swing up a hammock, bring a couple of squirrels aboard to continue the meat supply, and voila, permanent vacation. Or you could do it this way:

this man, Reishee Sowa of Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, apparently grew tired of trying to live self-sufficiently on dry land, and did what any of us would have done. He built his own island out of used pop bottles. 250,000 of them, plus some construction leftovers and bags of leaves, make up “his island,” though he’s quick to point out that it’s technically not an island by traditional standards.

read more . . . and more

Or this one:

The Floating Islands of Uros are made from the Totora reed. These reeds are stacked one on top of the other until there is a platform. People live on these island as they float around hunting for fish, birds and more Totora reeds. Well at least that is the way it used to be. Today people still live on these islands, but tourism is the main source of livelihood. Even though the islands are very touristy, I still recommend a visit to them.

read more . . . and more

Geodesic Tree House:

Looking up on my friend’s property one day, I noticed that the trees in his yard soared upwards to about 5 or 6 times taller than his house. “All that wasted space,” I thought. “Wouldn’t it be better if we lived in the trees?” Then I realized that columns we use to build our houses are made out of dead trees cut into teeny weeny pieces. Think of how useful an alive tree would be as a column. Then I thought that using geodesics to build in trees would free you from the 90 degree constraints of modern building: geodesics would fully utilize the 3D arena of tree dwelling. As I designed and crafted a couple versions of my idea, I found these:

Mitchell Joachim, part of the MIT Media Lab’s Smart Cities Group, along with ecological engineer Lara Greden and architect Javier Arbona, propose a home that is actually an ecosystem.
The Fab Tree Hab goes beyond sustainable housing and so-called green design — building with materials that have a low impact on the environment and human health.

read more

So that’s it. I’m not telling any more people any of my ideas until I actually get to finish one.

Last night, tuesday January 10th, 2006, the second official meeting of the Vox Pop 9-11 Activist Squad occurred, with three of the activists reporting back with some updates.

Eric Douglas commented on this guy:

Dara Mcquillan, PR man for Larry Silverstein Properties. Recall in early 2002, Larry Silverstein said the following:

I remember getting a call from the Fire Department commander, telling me they were not sure they were going to be able to contain the fire. I said, you know, “We’ve had such terrible loss of life that the smartest thing to do is just pull it.” And they made that decision to pull it and we watched the [World Trade Center 7] building collapse.

So, more than three years later, an answer came concerning the pressing question, “what do you mean you said to “pull it?” “Pulling” a building refers to a controlled demolition, but was that really how Tower 7 fell? I mean, it sure looks that way, but come on, why would the building already be wired?

Like I said, more than three years after Larry spoke the above quote, his PR rep Dana Mcquillan, came out with an answer as to what he really meant:

In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.

Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed. No lives were lost at Seven World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

So, by IT, Larry Silverstein was talking about the batallion of fire-fighters. We’ll lat that one lay for now, but if you want to check out some videos of tower 7 and judge for yourself, visit Eric Douglas’ website http://www.nistreview.org/

This website also contains an exhaustive documentation of the National Institute of Standards and Technology: World Trade Center Collapse Investigation.

My time is up, I was going to mention more, but it’s back to the grindstone at my job. If you want to know more, come to the next meeting at Vox Pop. We’ll be passing the hat to pay the rent.

1022 Cortelyou Road, Flatbush, Brooklyn
Thursday, Feb. 9, 2006 7:30 pm.

In trying to find the story about the West Virginia mining collapse, I googled the words “trapped miners, West Virginia” and found a host of different stories about many other mining accidents. I googled a number of different word scenarios and still couldn’t find the story until I just went to the Associated Press Website. What do I think of that? Well, since you asked, I’ll tell you.

As for now, I’m working in a career using advanced technology, GIS software, 3D animation software, CAD and a host of others in order to further the idea of community-based design and development. But I’m beginning to think that the idea of “development” is counter-productive, and Coal mining is just the tip of it. The computer I’m working on right now, and all the electronics we use at my office (and all of our cellphones) rely on materials that have to be mined from the earth. Now, not many people want to give up their homelands for it to be devastated and turned into a mine, so there’s a lot of struggle involved, sometimes cheating, lying, corruption and murder.

So what I’m thinking at the moment is that we can either see things like this mining accident as a red flag in our relationship with the Earth, or we can regard it as a necessary sacrifice to the gods of production and civilization. I once was a firm believer in Bucky Fuller’s idea that technology had the possibility to save humankind. I’m now beginning to think that almost all of our technology not only is rooted in oppression and violence, but also actually insists upon it for its survival. While we may send cell phones to growing communities in poorer nations and see the good they provide, we do not see the violence in obtaining mining rights for the materials in the same phone.

Today’s post is merely a rant, and this is something I’m going to be looking into deeper as the weeks go by, I’d like to hear what you think about this. I’m growing ever more anti-civ every day.

PS, here’s a quote about our lovely Appalachian Mountains, a place where some of my loved ones call home:

One of the greatest environmental and human rights catastrophes in American history is underway just southwest of our nation’s capital. In the coalfields of Appalachia, individuals, families, and entire communities are being driven off their land by flooding, landslides, and blasting resulting from mountaintop removal coal mining.

Mountain top removal coal mining is a relatively new type of coal mining that involves clear cutting native hardwood forests, using dynamite to blast away 800-1000 feet of mountaintop, and then dumping the debris into nearby valleys forever burying streams. Meanwhile, communities near these mining sites are forced to contend with; continual blasting from mining operations that can take place up to 300 feet from their homes and operate 24 hours/day, air pollution from dust and debris, and the threat of floods that have left hundreds dead and thousands homeless.

To read more about the Appalachian Mountains, go here.

I sincerely apologize for missing last week’s posting. I was trying to find an article I read not too long ago about scientists who believe that all of life on Earth may have actually come from Mars. Now, they don’t actually believe that’s true, but that it is possible. Well, I haven’t been able to find that story again, but I did uncover an old gem about a meteor from space, and the controversial conclusions some have come to.

In other news, we have now discovered that there are more planets than originally thought (there may be 17!). One quote by NASA scientist Donald Yeomans is strikingly telling:

The field of planetary science is currently enjoying an intense period of readjustment and discovery.

“Readjustment”? Doesn’t that just mean that we were wrong about stuff before? And “discovery” means that we are still finding things that we had no idea existed before.

So couple this news with the age old debate about Planet X. For the moment, disregard the theories about alien civilizations living on the supposed planet, and it seems as if science is claiming that just about anything is possible when it comes to our solar system regarding planets.

For a scientific article on Planet X, go here.