Save the World–Poop in a Bucket

January 30, 2008

...human waste, a number of other stories on the subject came out at the same time: Wasteland: A Journey through the American cloaca in Harper’s Magazine. Journalist Frederick Kaufman traces sewage from New York’s North River Solid Waste Treatment Plant to . . . [spoiler here!] bags of soil at Home Depot. A Mother Earth News reader submitted a photo and description of a handsome sawdust privy made out of an old garden hose box. Very clever! Science D...

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A Tensegrity Table

Mr. Homegrown

December 27, 2008

Design

3 Comments

...scavenged materials (scavenging seems appropriate in these crummy economic times!). To make your own tensegrity table, molecular biomechanics professor Dr. William H. Guilford has some very nice step-by-step instructions here. My version is slightly different, but frankly Guilford’s design is probably more stable. I used some electrical conduit tubing left over from remodeling the house, some rope and a stop sign that I found laying in a driveway...

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A Transportation Cocktail: Bikes, Trains and Buses

Mr. Homegrown

January 18, 2009

Bikes

5 Comments

...hen you bring up bikes with a customer service person it will be the first time they’ve ever heard the question. Now back to the slow, but entertaining San Joaquin train. While it takes longer than driving or flying, the views of the Central Valley can’t be beat. You’re well off the highway for most of the trip, and get a god’s eye view from the upper deck. Glimpses of farms, backyards and small towns flash by as if in a series of dream-like snaps...

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Los Angeles Chicken Produces World’s Largest Egg

Mr. Homegrown

April 13, 2009

Animals, Chickens

3 Comments

...red to be egg laying machines. Occasionally an egg will emerge before it’s time and you get an egg without a shell. Conversely some eggs will stay in longer and get big. You also get oddly shaped eggs on occasion. It’s perfectly normal if these freak eggs happen once in a while. If you get a lot of strange eggs it may be a sign of disease or nutritional deficiencies. Hall’s Cornish Cross chicken, incidentally, is a meat chicken that is not meant t...

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3D Greetings

Mr. Homegrown

December 25, 2008

Thoughtstylings

6 Comments

...tice. We taught ourselves how to free view three dimensional images a long time ago and, in additional to it being good for your eye muscles, it opens up a whole world of fun with old stereoscopic images such as these. To make your own stereographs all you need to do is take two pictures slightly spaced apart. As long as your subject doesn’t move you can do it with just one camera. Full instructions here. For those of you who, after an hour of rev...

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