Solutions(?)

[pan]

A thread dedicated towards possible solutions rather than the rather pessimistic fare we engage in with much of our other communication.

[pan]

Stronger than cement at 1/6 the weight.

[pan]

Henry Ford's "hemp plastic" car

[BO]

Live your life on a tightrope.

[BO]

How's about broadcasting yer own death on TV. Of course it could get boring unless one were to approach it creatively. Imagine the possibilities.

I actually view this as a very healthy thing. Essentially, it pulls the plug on a corrupt health care system designed to drain you of your entire family's fortunes before you expire. Bravo.

Of course, the -- everything-is-preordained-and-we-have-no-right-to-determine-our-own-destinies -- religious wacko's are up in arms. Too bad shmucks. If you don't like it, go kill yerselves.

[BO]

From the 'Beatings will continue until morale improves' department:

Are you depressed? Solution: Find yourself some happy friends.

You mean, like this?

FU, Laura Rowley.

[hannah j]

For some reason I am feeling no stress. I have been buying more weaving stuff and and breaking some old habits. I decided to offset my trip to see my children in Portland with donating to an organization which plants trees here and all over the planet. Every winter we have gone to Arizona to work/sell/buy at the Tucson Mineral Show, but I am thinking of giving it a pass and staying here making things. We have had some surprisingly good shows lately in smaller Kansas towns, maybe because they and we have fewer expenses. We are eating a lot of soup. Our cats sleep with us, and purr. The snow lasted one day....We will be driving up to Portland next week, hope the weather is kind.

[hannah j]

http://flickr.com/photos/53699664@N00/
for your xmas pleasure
eartha kitsch

[BO]

Sick. In a good way.

Got a neighbor that likes kitsch. But, she likes it for all the wrong reasons.

Gonna get cold up here next week. Looks to be sunny though. Just watch out for the black ice.

[hannah j]

thanks, patrick is staying here, just can't deal with the northwest in the winter. too damp and dreary for him. kansas is cold but brighter. i want to see my kids though and this is when we are used to gathering, so as long as the car will get me there, and it is all ready, i will drive carefully up there! i have good tires and no deathwish!

too much kitsch is suffocating! like living in one of those frida kahlo shrines you see. i liked the evil santas this woman has! he always scared the heck our of me!

[pan]

Man-Made Bacteria Produces a Fuel That’s Better Than Gas

[Mouse]

Responsibility for a Healthy World

Dr Rath Health Foundation, Responsibility for Health, Peace and Social Justice

There's some excellent information on here, and really good thinking. Very informative.
Also worth bookmarking this page on it (site navigation a bit awkward)
"It will be hard for you to find a more comprehensive "library" on the health benefits of vitamins, micronutrients and nutrition in the battle against today's most common diseases of the industrialized and the developing world."
The Science of Cellular Health

[waldopaper]

What if... just suppose... as they did when I was a young lad back in 1954... a new house cost $25k and a new car cost $2k... in today's dollars? I believe it can be very easily done... if all the excess profit-making filigree were stripped away from each design. I am not a designer, architect or automotive engineer... and have been doodling sketches (for the past 20 years) of both dwellings and transportation devices easily capable of housing/ transporting 4 people in reasonable comfort/ speed. That's for the "developed" world. I think the same can be done for the "developing" world for a today's-dollar cost of $2k and $200 respectively. 100 days' "wages" for transport... 1000 days' "wages" for shelter.

This is why I think "nationalizing" energy, housing and transport (as well as health) is a "design" problem... so the objective of the design would be minimum cost to the end-user instead of maximum "profit" to the people who pay the designer. In the past, it was assumed that the minimum cost to the end-user would prevail according to some kind of Darwinian market-model that has not existed (if it ever did) since the 1860s. What is left now is to put down the mad cow of profit. It should be built-in to every design at a reasonably-fixed rate instead of assuming that profit is (and should be) limitless.

As Nature dictates, there IS room for design that is for maximum performance for the end-user as well. As it is now, the system that fosters profitability for the designers' employers does neither one.