On religion

Everything is magic until you understand how it works.

Green from your Roof

I live in a rowhouse with a flat roof, I got interested in the idea of installing a green roof. A green roof is essentially plants growing on the roof. They could be anything from a field of sedums to elaborate whole rooftop gardens, including trees and plants. I love plants and especially this time of year i love to be out in the garden. It would be cool to extend that love to an area of unused space on top of the house. But more that that it could have some real benefits for the environment and my own bottom line. You see urban areas, with all their concrete and asphalt absorb a lot of heat during the summer creating what is called a heat island effect, making cities 6 to 10 degrees hotter then the surrounding area. Hotter summers mean more air conditioning more A/C means higher energy bills. That's where a green roof comes in, on a summer day the surface of a traditional rood can get up to 190 degrees while a green roof stays at an even 70-80 degrees. This keeps the inside of the house cooler since heat is not being gained by the roof. Also it helps with reducing runoff since rain is absorbed by the plants. It makes so much sense that Germany has made green roofs part of it building codes. So now the question should I invest in a solar roof or a green roof? Maybe both?

Frankin-meat?

For you meat eaters and (non-meat eaters as well) out there, if you could eat meat that did not come from the killing or harm of any animal would you? What if that meat was grown in a lab? Scientists have for a couple of years new been working on growing meat in a test tube, sometimes called In-Vitro Meat or Cultured Meat. Think about the possibilities, no fears of mad cow or avian flu, or the environmental destruction from large scale agribusiness. The cruelty associated with raising animals for food would be eliminated. I know the idea might seem unsettling, but what is more unsettling, killing and dissecting animals to eat them or growing sheets of "meat" in a clean room free from disease, hormones, pesticides, cruelty?

Of course what will happen to farm animals if this catches on? Will the cow and the chicken go extinct?

Solar Dreaming

Here's a idea i've been toying with for a while. Putting solar panels on the roof. With electrical rates going up this might be good time to reexamine this idea. One good thing to come out of the recent energy bill (in among the handouts for oil companies, but don't get me started) was tax incentives for installing solar and buying energy efficient appliances. In addition to federal incentives states also have programs if you can find them. In maryland there is a grant program although it has a long waiting list. Also maryland has net metering meaning that if my solar panels are generating more power than I am using then my meter will run backwards and credit my electrical bill. It's a cool concept, but is now a good time to go solar. There are some really cool advances in solar that are coming to market that could reduce the cost of installation and make them more efficient at collecting the energy of the sun.

There is a seminar in Jessup, MD on Saturday, April 8th on residential solar and wind power if you want to learn more.

Spring is here!

It's almost here, my favorite time of the year. When it starts to get warmer and the flowers bloom and life seems a little better all around. There are signs all over, the crocus are coming up and i've seem plenty of robins (of course in our area i don't think the robins ever leave, but that's beside the point). For a jump start on spring we're going to the Philadelphia Flow show Interested in forming a caravan up there let me know.

Mutant Food

I've been collecting what I classify as "Mutant M&Ms" which for whatever reason (perhaps a radiation source in our work lunch room) seem to be very prevalent in the packages of peanut M&Ms. For a while it was only orange ones which made me hypothesis that it was a genetic disorder associated with the genes for the orange pigmentation but then I found several blue ones with similar characteristics so I can only assume it is must be an environmental cause. I've read about mutant frogs being a sign of an environmental contaminant so this is likely the cause, but why just M&M why not Skittles or even regular M&Ms. I thought maybe it was because M&Ms are bioindicators but then I found this site with other effected species. MoFA

As i side note my collection has been slowly disappearing. Could it be someone is stealing them as part of an elaborate coverup of a worldwide epidemic of food mutation? I should say any more.

Jefferson Revolution

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
Thomas Jefferson

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny”
Thomas Jefferson

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”
Thomas Jefferson

New old look

I got right down into the guts of this blog and modified it to be more like my previous incarnation. Let me know what you think.

Fictional Future

The following is an except from a history of the future

...

After the flu pandemic of 2023 and the jihad wars that followed, humanity was finally ready for a change. When faced with great peril and the very real consequences of human alteration of the climate people begin to wake up and see if things didn’t change and didn’t change quickly humanity might not make it through the rest of the century. With the success of Meta states people were no longer tied to the whims of classical geographical nation states. The Contract had eliminated the need for top down leadership driven by power, it was replaced with local, regional and global cyber Contract based confederations. The Contract provided the framework for real free trade and commerce to all cosigners of the contract. Under this new framework of interconnected e-society the collective good and personal freedoms were both provided for. Everyone growing up in this new world learned that when they were ready they could choice the Contract that wished to join. Once part of a Contract they had the rights to submit modifications to the contract as they felt were needed. Or leave the Contract to find one that better met their needs. The largest Contracts were the EnlightenedCommercialist, theGreens, and the FreeUrbanites, but there were many others, the neoChristains the postZionists where but a hand full of groups still clinging to the idea of the theocratic state and in a sense they finally achieved it. But fewer and fewer people still followed the old world religions given that most of the holy places were now great radioactive valleys of glass and ash and yet God never lifted a finger to stop the destruction.

Tara-forming once the dream of off world colonies is now a necessity on earth to reverse the effects of centuries of mans excesses. Most people born in the early part of the century who had lived through the great cataclysms of the 20’s and 30’s were stunned at just how quickly the world came together to face these growing problems. Once the old centers of power fell apart net communities filled the gap. These communities became real communities in the form of the Contract and opens-source lightweight framework for net enabled democracy. The more connected and involved in the process people became the more effective the new framework became. These new communities formed around common interests rather then the arbitrary accident of birth.