RC LINKS: Mid July 2009

Some items of interest on the road to becoming super-empowered:

• DIY hydroponic window farms.  Leveraging windows (which is of particular use in urban settings) for food production.  An example Bruce Sterling calls favela chic -- an oxymoron that's an appropriate description of cultural methodologies that are essential to completely bypassing the impact of perpetual global depression/breakdown.
• Easy to use cutting machine for local fabrication (extremely slick commercialization of one of the tools needed):  

 

• Rob Hopkins releases the initial results of a "Transition towns" analysis on the ability of a town to "feed" itself.  Nice use of Google maps to map local arable land and food footprints.
• DIYbio.  A DIY project to create a professional grade machine for Gel electrophoresis (a commonly used tool in microbiology) for only a couple hundred $$. (wonky -- merely an example of high end bio-engineering that can be done in a local setting for low $$).
• More en route.

Comments

[Hatty]

In response to the Transition Towns link, do localities really need to be capable of feeding themselves just from surrounding arable land? Hundreds of years ago, before gasoline fed motor-vehicles, large regions containing many people survived entirely off of international trade in food, some even fed themselves with smuggling. The best example I can think of at the moment is the Caribbean islands in the colonial period covered in sugar plantations feeding itself primarily with smuggled food from New England and the Middle Colonies of North America.

They didn't even have coal powered trains at this time, but massive population centers were still kept well fed by what today would like logisitically primitive trade.

[James Bowery]

I like the aesthetics of window hydroponics -- and their consequent "statement" value but they are really rather low value from a subsistence standpoint. Better to get one of these:

http://www.algaevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/avs_harvester_sell.pdf

[JR]

Hatty, they don't need to be fully self-sufficient. However, they can provide a floor level of production (to ward off the effects of disruption) and fresh high end (in season) to "traded" foods.

Thanks James.

[gmoke]

A south-facing window is already a solar collector. We should learn how to use them.

from http://solarray.blogspot.com/2004/12/three-solar-projects.html

Your Southernmost Window

A series of half hour programs for TV, videotape, DVD and other digital media

What you can do with one south-facing window, or how to live within a solar budget, including designs viewers can replicate at home to provide heat, light, ventilation, and/or stimulate ecological growth.

Program 1. What You can See from a Window - one square foot of sunlight, orientation to the sun, design principles, window types, glazing, heat loss, infiltration, insulation, heating ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), air purification, breathing

Program 2. Every Window in the House - window types take 2, radiation and convection, caulking and weatherstripping, drafts and infiltration, how to chart your airflows, how to use them, window insulation, whole house HVAC

Program 3. The Electric Window - solar electricity/photovoltaic/PV, small battery charger, solar/dynamo flashlight radio, one window systems, permanent emergency capacity, battery switching and your car

Program 4. Hot and Cold Windows - windowbox heaters, passive and active ventilators, advanced airflow usage, active and passive water heating, your northernmost window, a nod towards refrigerators and low heat differential heat pumps

Program 5. The Greenhouse Window - windowsill gardens, bubbling out/bubbling in, heat storage, aquaculture, vermiculture, and ecological housekeeping, the neighborhood

Program 6. Most Windows in Town -what if everybody did it?, the economics of sunlight, systems thinking from community to region to country to world, globalization of solar physics

[Bill T.]

What is gel electrophoresis and why would I want a box to do it?

[Jeffery]

Good question Bill T.

[Kragen Javier Sitaker]

Window farms aren't going to be big enough to supply anything more than herbs and spices. A sod roof, a window algae farm — maybe.

[g48]

GMoke, your can-do attitude is refreshing in these times.

--

Herbs = rudimentary medicines. Spices = rudimentary food preservatives. Don't discount the value of these things.

--

Something people need to know how to make: soaps, detergents, and sanitizers. Sanitation is the first line of defense against disease.

--

Something people need to think about:

What to do when there is no more toilet paper. By which I don't mean "when you forget to buy more at the supermarket," but "when there *is no more* to be bought."

Best solution I've come up with is re-usable cloths similar to washcloths, that can be used like toilet paper. The used ones are stored in a container in the bathroom, and then collected by a door-to-door service (via horse-drawn wagon by the time this goes into effect) & laundered in a manner similar to that of cloth diapers. Every week a supply of clean ones is dropped off when the dirty ones are picked up.

If anyone has a better idea, I'm all ears.

[dagezhu]

Everyone's favorite war theorist is quoted by IEEE:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/opensource-warfare/0

@g48

"Best solution I've come up with is re-usable cloths similar to washcloths, that can be used like toilet paper. ... If anyone has a better idea, I'm all ears."

Get a smooth rock, more than one if you can. Wipe your butt with the rock or rocks. Hose off the rocks. Hikers and campers have been doing this for centuries.

I tend to think every small community can support at least one paper production operation. I've recently made crude paper from mulberry pulp -- other communities might use different feedstocks.

[Duncan Kinder]

Before we get too dewy eyed about RC's, look at this:

Mexican Drug Lords Make Use of Lancaster County:
http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/240278

Lancaster County, PA, is Pennsylvania Dutch country.

[g48]

Dagezhu, your hard smooth stones are an interesting idea that might work under conditions where my cloths wouldn't, though might not be applicable to certain other conditions.

"Poo stones" are less likely to work in a city, where indoor plumbing is the norm, since a dropped stone could cause a hard toilet clog or crack the porcelain.

They are more likely to work in settings that have composting toilets, since composters can't be clogged and the occasional dropped stones could be fished out of the finished compost.

In an indoor setting they couldn't be washed with a hose, since it would lead to splattering of fecal bacteria on indoor surfaces. In an outdoor setting the resulting wash water would have to be treated as sewage, which is more likely to be possible in a remote area.

Stones are more easily sanitized than cloths, and in a pinch could even be put into a fire overnight, unlike cloths. Or, more usually, the visible poo could be washed off with soap and water in a tumbling device, and then the stones could be sanitized in a fire without risk of obnoxious air pollution downwind. Stones could also be steam-cleaned, with steam developed by solar thermal power.

At first I was highly skeptical but as I thought it through enough for this posting, it started making sense. So this is very interesting and I'm going to give it more thought.

And whether one uses stones or cloths, a bidet attachment under the toilet seat can minimize the work involved and the amount of stones or cloths needed, by doing most of the personal cleaning with a water spray.

And for anyone who's tempted to laugh at this stuff, just go look up cholera and read a bit.

[The Dark Avenger]

Something people need to know how to make: soaps, detergents, and sanitizers

Saline water is a cheap antiseptic, as is highly distilled ethanol cut with pure water.