In this last weekend just before Christmas, some of us are still behind on gifts, and often there are extra friends, family and such who would appreciate a heartfelt, handmade gift. Thanks to the internet, there are loads of ideas on making quick and inexpensive DIY gifts, and more importantly, there is still time to put some of these together before the big day!…
Unless you are blind and deaf or live under a very large rock, you are probably being bombarded with Christmas ads on TV, radio, internet, in the stores and such, it’s been a commercialized thing for a long time. You don’t have to fall into the money trap of this holiday, there are many things we can do to celebrate without having to go into a financial black (Friday) hole.
One of the things I am doing is I am making my own Christmas cards to give out, I am going to be using my newly acquired skills in Zentangle
The Welsh institute of town planners has awarded its top prize to a newly built off-grid home. Meanwhile Welsh planners decline applications from hundreds of off-grid projects every year.
the house at Maes Yr Onn’s has won the 2013 Wales Planning Award organised by RTPI Cymru. Chris Fray, chair of the judging panel, said: “Maes yr Onn Farm Off-Grid Living is already being hailed as an exemplar of sustainable building excellence.”
The new home of farmer Arthur Davies and his family is self sufficient, sustainable and completely off the grid.…
I just spent 3 days in my neighborhood, AND the 3 surrounding towns without power. Well, WE had power, our little sky castle, but everyone else (of those on grid power) were without power. On Sunday afternoon, we were in our second or third day of freezing fog and drizzle, most people had gone into town and stocked up on supplies, mostly food and water type stuff. I was at the grocery store myself to stock up on supplies for the week because of family coming out for the week of Thanksgiving.
I was somewhat surprised at the number of people in the store the week before Thanksgiving, I expected to see it that busy later on in the week, then I remembered we were in for a few days of freezing weather, fog and sleet. I noticed several shelves that were cleaned out, fully cleaned out of whatever had been there, it made me think of the way people will clear out a store when things are going wrong.…
San Diego Permaculture and the Sky Mountain Institute will host the 2013 San Diego Permaculture Convergence, Nov. 9-10, aimed at showing how to harvest rainwater using simple structures.
The event will feature talks and hands-on demonstrations about rainwater and gray-water harvesting, aquaponics, building a chicken coop, organic gardening, urban goat-keeping, rocket stoves, growing shiitake mushrooms on oak logs and creating “food forests.”…
On October 27th the lights will go out.
Imagine 10 days of a catastrophic blackout across the United States. No cell phone service, no ATM withdrawals, no working street lights, no available gasoline … no escape. Fact:It could happen.
Sunday week, October 27, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, American Blackout airs. National Geographic’s two-hour, edge-of-your-seat movie event imagines the story of a national power failure in the United States caused by a cyberattack — told in real time, over 10 days, by those who kept filming on cameras and phones. You’ll learn what it means to be absolutely powerless. Let down by the power companies who are doing little to guard against this eventuality…
Family “living the dream” want to exchange their freedom for stonking electricity bill…
The National Park Service(NPS) issued a warning last week to all people residing in its parks and campgrounds, in RVs in the backcountry, or on houseboats in government owned marinas — that they will be required to leave the parks by 3 p.m. last Thursday and find other accommodations due to the federal government shutdown.
At Lake Mohave, for example, part of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, the park is closed to the general public. The Lake Mead NRA is operated by the National Park Service, part of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
When Lake Mohave facilities are on a holiday schedule such as Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day, the entrance station is closed, but visitors are still permitted to enter the park. That was not the case Tuesday, as the entrance was barricaded and a park ranger was posted there to determine who enters and who gets turned away.…
There is a moment on the Discovery Channel’s new reality show, “Naked and Afraid,” when Alison Teal and the survivalist ex-Marine she was paired with see their camera crew in a whole new light.
Teal, a globe-trotting filmmaker from South Kona, and L.A. bodyguard Jonathan Klay were struggling. The show drops participants in far-flung locations — in this case the Maldives — for a 21-day survival test without food, water or clothing. When it gets that rugged, nudity ceases to be a concern, replaced by the urgent need to find food.…
Wales has been saying for years that it wants more environemntally freindly buildings – trouble is they keep on rejecting the planning applictions made for such homes.
Now a Welsh Government Minister has finally give=n the green light to a farmer’s new eco-home. The state-of-the-art farmhouse got the stamp of approval by the Minister for Natural Resources and Food, Alun Davies. It had been initially opposed by Caerphilly council, but they were forced to go ahead by the Welsh national government.
Farmer Arthur Davies (no relation) and his family, are moving into Maes Yr Onn, Manmoel.He has “taken our dream of living at the farm and transformed it into reality,” he said. …
The Bilderberg Group (meeting in the UK currently) operated completely in secret for two decades after it was founded in 1954, bringing together the most powerful corporate bosses with leading Western politicians and bankers to advance their common agenda. A partial list of attenders is at the end of this article. It was largely a US-European cabal and had unrivalled power until the 1980s. It was managed out of the New York offices of Kroll Associates, a particularly well-connected private Detective agency.
Former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went there to be briefed on Monetarism from its founder Milton Friedman, and introduced the policy into the UK, along with deregulation of the banks, much favored by Bilderberg’s leaders from the world’s biggest banking, insurance and manufacturing groups.
So what will they be discussing this year?…
X Men star Ellen Page is co-star opposite Arbitrage actress Brit Marling in new espionage thriller The East, which was produced and co-written by 29-year-old Brit.
Speaking at the Los Angeles premiere of the movie, which also stars True Blood hunk Alexander Skarsgard, Ellen said The East, focuses on an anarchist group known for executing covert attacks on major corporations. “These issues were something I was already interested in. The ethical murkiness is very compelling because that is what life is right now, it’s hard to know how to be alive, how to make the right choices when we see the injustice in the world and the atrocities committed by corporations in the name of profit,” she said.…
