June: National Bathroom Reading Month

...itional supplements. Precisely the items you don’t want for getting around urban Los Angeles. This particular catalog featured something new, however, his and hers matching bikes from Schwinn called, we kid you not, “Sid and Nancy“. Sid and Nancy feature automatic shifting since either bike gears are too complicated for Americans to figure out, or folks want to do what they do while driving: talk on cell phones. But why do Sid and Nancy have gears...

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What does the loving landscape look like?

...first, was transformed by nature into a sort of secret park known only to urban explorers–and then, beginning in 2006, was refashioned into a much loved public attraction by a team of architects and designers. If you can get your hands on Walking the High Line by Joel Sternfeld, it’s well worth a look to see how nature had gained a strong foothold in on the train tracks before the designers moved in, even though she had to work high in the air on...

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Journal of the New Alchemists

...eople have been up to since the 2008 economic bubble: aquaculture, organic gardening, earth building, market gardens, no-till agriculture, old timey music, wind power, four season growing, permaculture, non-hierarchical leadership and goats. Only the 1980s era of appropriate technology amnesia separates current efforts from the work of the New Alchemists. Aquaponic system. Image: Journal of the New Alchemy. By accident I discovered the Journal of...

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Saturday Linkages: The Calm After the Storm

...nion/opinion-la/la-ol-getting-jerry-browned-20121024,0,2854852.story … New Urban Velo issue free online: http://www.urbanvelo.org/issue34/ The fox is guarding the hen house! How the sugar industry defends itself against claims that sugar is unhealthy: http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/how-the-sugar-industry-defends.html … Billboard firm wrote L.A. proposal on signs http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1027-billboard-influence-20121027,0,1562494....

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A Year after The Age of Limits: 5 Responses to the End Times

...there’s some pretty fishy stuff involved here in regard to race and class, urban vs. rural, and suppressed desires to blow out our neighbors’ brains with shotguns. Example: Any cult/religious belief that Something Big is going to happen to exalt the believers and sweep away the unbelievers. The attraction here is not only increased availability in desirable real estate, but also the assurance that you are special, chosen, and right in all things,...

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