Solutions(?)

[pan]

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

[Cal]

Does the ground in funk really make garments less efficient for keeping out the cold? Never would have thought of that - I suppose because of the warmer climate we have here. My little bit towards the environment for the last 10 years or so has been to stomp on my clothes (as if pressing grapes) in my bath water with as gentle a detergent as I can find and then send the bath water out into the orchard. I have learnt to specialize in dark coloured clothes.

[waldopaper]

OY!! Why didn't I THINK of that? Does it work? I sure don't see why it wouldn't. You don't notice the thermal inefficiency unless it's REALLY cold... but you do notice the gray...which I suppose would not show up on darker clothes. Howcum izzit that desert Arabs wear black?

[pan]

Perhaps throwing the clothes in the drier for about 10 minutes to fluff them up would be a good compromise - use much less electricity but still retain the insulating factor of the clothes.

[pan]

I thought Bedouins used indigo. Ms. Medusa loves to dye with indigo - it is a bit messy as it is such an efficient natural dye but the color is gorgeous.

[littleoldme]

You're gonna love this, you can use indigo as a hair dye. henna first indigo second, brown almost black hair.

[hannah j]

http://www.wisementrading.com/washing.htm

[pan]

I'm loving that Dean - refreshing to read about an administrator in an educational institution that actually still has education as his first priority.

[hannah j]

just to show you no board is without heated conversations, a simple question sparked this 'debate' about washing by hand.....

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/homest/msg0616403627635.htm...

[pan]

New battery is huge step in the right direction.

[curt]

Wow!

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gopnik09/gopnik09_index.html#video

AMAZING BABIES

[ALISON GOPNIK:] The biggest question for me is "How is it possible for children, young human beings, to learn as much as they do as quickly and as effectively as they do?" We've known for a long time that human children are the best learning machines in the universe. But it has always been like the mystery of the humming birds. We know thast they fly, but we don't know how they can possibly do it. We could say that babies learn, but we didn't know how.

But now there's this really exciting confluence of work in artificial intelligence and machine learning, neuroscience and in developmental psychology, all trying to tackle this question about how children could possibly learn as much as they do.

more here

[Mark]

Chickens Refuse to Eat Genetically Modified Feed

My solution is simple. I don't shop in supermarkets. My Co-Op won't carry anything with GM ingredients.

[Mark]

I just got back from seeing the film "No Impact Man," and it was as if somebody had made a feel-good film just for me.

Back when I wrote about not using toilet paper, I got many reactions. Some people thought it was an interesting or useful idea, some thought it was nuts, and one person who had been a fan of my writing for several years, said it was disgusting and cut off all communications with me. No Impact Man, Colin Beavan, and his wife, who works for Business Week, and their two-year-old daughter, went without toilet paper for a year and got similar reactions. At one point in the film, his wife, Michelle, asks why so many people hate them.

Beavan and family decided to eliminate their carbon footprint entirely. Living in New York, they bought no plastic, used no electricity (except for a solar panel to power his laptop so that he could blog), and according to Michelle, "had a ball." Michelle began the year addicted to caffeine and to shopping, but their lifestyle change reversed her pre-diabetic condition.

They were very public, appearing on the radio and TV, and were the subject of a lot of publicity, much of it negative, and some of it is shown in the film. But their friends stuck with them and they're the sort of people who do whatever they set out to do. I don't think quitting is in their vocabulary.

At one point in the film Beavon goes to the South Bronx and is taken on a tour by Majora Carter. We see the dump so that we can visualize the fact that when we throw something "away" it doesn't go away, and we see the garbage trucks going back and forth as Beavan talks about the childhood asthma and other disease clusters in that neighborhood due to the pollution.

Throughout the film, Beavan confronts the criticism that one person can't make a difference. He concludes, as we all must sooner or later, that each of us is the only one who can make a difference.

Many other people have been doing their own thing for decades, but many people who had never before considered not being consumers have been inspired by Beavan's eccentric little project. That's right--even though the word eccentric wasn't used in the movie, Beavan and Michelle have money, and when people with money do something totally insane, they're not called psychotics, they're called eccentrics.

Waiting a half hour in the dark for a bus is one of my least favorite activities, but after seeing "No Impact Man" this evening, I had a smile on my face the entire time. And for the 45 minutes it took to get home. And as I was telling some people in the lobby of my building about it. And that smile is still stuck on my face as I'm typing this. How lovely of Colin, Michelle, and their daughter Isabella, who don't know that I exist and probably never will, to make a movie just for me. And for other people like me so that we'll stop feeling so alone. And to inspire more people. Now that their project is over, they're using electricity again, but not as much because they know what the real costs of energy pollution are and they are secure in the hard-won knowledge that they can get along without it. They'll be increasing their footprint, but never thoughtlessly and never to where it had been previously. And there isn't an ad agency in the world that can ever again sell them anything that they neither want nor need. It may just be the next step in human evolution.

Little drama, no belly laughs, very little plot, rather ordinary characters, no special effects, no spectacular cinematography, and I award "No Impact Man" all the stars in the sky. It isn't part of the problem, it is part of the solution, and that's what we need the most.