Maggots!

...osting requires time and initiative. Unfortunately both our garden and our energy level are at a low point, both sapped by the record breaking heat – anyone see Al Gore’s movie? The result of this lack of effort has been the maggot party currently going on in our compost pile. The best compostin’ revolutionary I ever met, photographer Becky Cohen maintained a three pile system contained in bins she made out of scrap lumber. When the first bin woul...

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LED Light Bulbs

...umens to watts ratio of 34. For more on these issues see the Department of Energy’s FAQ on LEDs. As the DOE notes in the FAQ, it’s not entirely fair to directly compare compact fluorescents to LED lights, since LED bulbs have a more directed light making them perhaps better for applications such as bedside reading lights, where you don’t want to bother a dozing partner. LEDs, due to their exceptionally long life — upwards of 60,000 hours — are als...

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Ridin’ On

...mend compact fluorescent bulbs, hand washing clothes and a myriad of other energy saving ideas that will lesson our impact on the environment but at most save a typical household maybe a few hundred dollars a year. On the other hand, getting rid of a car and replacing it with a bike, which we were able to do, can save the typical household an average of between $8,000 and $12,000 a year. We realize that not everyone can get by without a car, and b...

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Saturday Tweets: Beet Raisins, Seed Libraries and a Pepperoni Disaster

...e sure to click on "biographies." This project inspires me and returns the energy I put into it in spades. Earth scientists (and others), please consider joining us! — Peter Kalmus (@ClimateHuman) April 6, 2018 Why So Many Public Libraries Are Now Giving Out Seeds @atlasobscura https://t.co/YpPQZo4K4h — Rachel Surls (@RachelSurls) April 6, 2018 Eric Garcetti can’t be a ‘climate mayor’ while he’s making more room for cars https://t.co/sg9Uf83izf —...

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California Dreaming

...national. My 83 year old mom broke her sternum in an automobile accident, making her yet another victim of a city designed for cars that forces everyone to drive, even for distances of less than a mile. After the accident, many hours were spent dealing with doctors, auto body shops, insurance companies and the vile Automobile Club whose lobbyists, by the way, are busy in the state capital pushing for the auto-centric planning that ruins our citie...

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