restriction of access to land is the root of all slavery
Category: Uncategorized
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Does permaculture mean more work or less? On the one hand the argument is that by creating systems that replicate nature and look after themselves, without human interference, (like Masanobu Fukuoka) the need for inputs is reduced. By reducing inputs you are maximising productivity, so that although your yields may be lower, the energy put in to achieve them is far less, so the system is more efficient.
On the other hand the argument is that a lot of small holders, who are closer to the land than one huge industrial farm, can pay closer attention to the land and enable it to be more productive, because more attention can be paid to smaller details and maximising productivity. This suggests a system that requires more energy, or at least more time than the current one.
Which argument is right? Maybe they are both right – the cheap energy that is currently sustaining farming is going to become more expensive, so that labour will no longer be prohibitively expensive. At this point having lots of people paying close attention to complex polycultures and natural systems will become more efficient. This still doesn’t sound like the “do nothing” farming that Fukuoka preached though? Maybe he didn’t count all his observation time as work!
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From 2003 – 2005 I made a few BMX videos on an old low fi Fujifulm digital camera. I just uploaded them all to youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/scruffybmx/
This is a nice one:
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So I have been looking on ebay a lot for “permanent magnet motors” to try and find one for my turbine. There are lots on there, but it’s very hard to know whether what I am looking at will be any good for a turbine. This article answers that question:
http://greenterrafirma.com/wordpress/dc-wind-turbine-motors-on-ebay-beware/
You need 1 volt per 25 rpm, so just divide the voltage (in DC) by the top rpm and see if that’s 25 or less. If it’s not then it’s no good (unless you want to gear it, which I definitely don’t!).
Let the search continue…
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Today I was walking home from work when I saw an old sailing mast that our hoarding neighbour wants to get rid of, and I had an idea. Why not build a wind turbine. The internet is going to show me how, but I thought I’d put my own process here in the hope that it might help someone else.
The best resource I found pretty quickly was this:
http://www.mdpub.com/Wind_Turbine/
That seems like a good place to start, but first I have some questions. What is the difference between a horizontal and a vertical turbine, and which is better? The first page of this answers this question pretty categorically:
Vertical ones are less efficient. Easy. What next? How many blades should I have? Surely more is better right? Well no:
http://www.coloradowindpower.com/page.php?12
Ok cool. So I need 3 blades. Right lets go and find some scrap bits of drainpipe….
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I have been putting photos up here for a while now so it might be interesting to someone…
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The arrest of Azhar Ahmed raises real concerns about what any of us can say online. It seem that we live in a time when any expression of a view that is different from those in power can lead to your arrest and imprisonment. Our use of language has to be guarded, to avoid raising suspicion.
To circumvent these restrictions I feel it is important to develop new ways of communicating which allow us to express opinions which differ from the authorities, whist appearing to toe the line. How about this:
“!The arrest of Azhar Ahmed was entirely justified and fair.”
The insertion of an exclamation point before a statement is a commonly used convention in programming languages, to negate the statement it precedes. Thus, with this understanding, the comment above can be read to mean:
“The arrest of Azhar Ahmed was NOT entirely justified and fair”.
The advantage of this form of communication is that it allows you to express opinions which differ from those which are found acceptable by the authorities, without actually expressing them at all. It could easily be argued that the “!” was a typographic error, or was intended to be appended to the preceding sentence; thus the true intention of the phrase can only be induced by the context in which it is used. This is a great advantage when one wishes to express a “thought crime”.
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For a long time we kept photos of our trails off the internet because we didn’t want too many kids knowing about them, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that everyone who lives within 20 miles and cares, now knows about them; they are tumbled down and gradually washing away. These photos document the trails from their inception, to their pinacle in around 2007-2008. If you are one of the ungrateful kids who currently trashes these jumps, you can take a look at what you are missing, and all the hard work that you have destroyed:
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I am enjoying my new copy of the land magazine!
scruffian 