Fresh Fall Fruit Plate

Welcome, Weekend Herb Blogging readers!
I love going to Farmer’s Markets this time of year. In the summer, not so much, since most of the things there are things I grow myself or don’t get excited about. I’ll pop in for pluots, apricots, and peaches, none of which (alas) I have here, but that’s [...]

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That TransCon Rails Ta(il|le)

Nathaniel Talbott is really rocking my world with his recent essay comparing the transcontinental railroad with the ruby-on-rails phenomenon. As he points out, there are some surprising similarities in enabling markets and disintermediation– the physical railroad opened up new territories and new markets, and the rapid development cycle of ROR is enabling software customization [...]

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Housing Bubble as Catabolic Collapse Driver

I hope I’m wrong, but it is starting to seem to me that the Housing Bubble here in the ‘States has a lot of the characteristics of what is termed a “depletion crisis” in John Greer’s scholarly paper “How Civilzations Fall: a Theory of Catabolic Collapse”, postulating models for historical civilization cycles.
A society that uses [...]

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the story of hemp in America

I will quote directly from this excellent factual article on the history of hemp in America:
The American colonists relied heavily on hemp. At that time, hemp was the world’s leading crop. A law enacted in Virginia in 1619 made hemp production mandatory for all farmers. Similar laws were passed in Massachusetts in 1631, in Connecticut [...]

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Driving less, walking more

If you’re looking for places in walking distance of where you live, or evaluating a neighborhood to see what’s walkable, try WalkScore, a maps mashup that shows resources in an area. It’s not perfect, but it may show you things that you didn’t realize were around a corner that you hadn’t visited, like a [...]

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Addendum: on dogs, and on animal research

Most people grow up so far out of touch with animals that they probably shouldn’t even be doing animal research. Researchers ’surprised’ by dogs’ abilities? Did any of them grow up with a family dog?
Growing up with one or more dogs, two or more cats, and various numbers of goats, chickens, and occasionally [...]

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animals, yes, they ARE smart, aware, feeling, etc

posted this great Washington Post article about cognitive reasoning and inference in dogs, who behaved similarly to 14-month-old children in an inference test. And I just have to RANT, seeing the ‘wow, who knew?’ tone of this article (not at him, at the world in general).
I grew up with animals. They [...]

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Discardian…

…is rocking my world.
http://www.metagrrrl.com/discardian/

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foo-year’s revolution

Speaking of whole grains, in the last post, remind me (and scares me!) that we’re almost halfway through another year. Yeesh!
I don’t recall now whether we made our New Year’s resolutions at Rosh Hashanah or in late December, but I thought I’d post them and see how we’re doing.
These are our family resolutions, rather [...]

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got dirt? want free veggies?

Then let me plant some stuff in your backyard. My garden’s just about FULL, and there’s still stuff I want to try! Kind of tomatoes and peppers, melons, sweet potatoes, etc.
So. If you have some backyard you aren’t using, and are willing to host a small test garden (from 2×2 foot to [...]

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