Posted by Dave on August 17, 2010
riding mower
It has been said that necessity is the mother of all invention. If so, I think the combination of laziness and beer must come in a close second. I think the contraption shown here is the most ingenious thing I have ever seen (ya’ know, other than my computer, the electricity making it run and the human body, yadda, yadda, ya…). I ask you, who has more of the aforementioned combination of necessity, laziness and beer than North America’s redneck?
Clearly, a hard-working, hard-resting, God-fearing redneck without the financial wherewithal to acquire some mad-fangled riding lawnmower contrived this beautiful solution. Genius, I tell you. By employing some gears and pedal-power a standard reel mower is transformed into a veritable gobbler of grass (I am assuming, anyway). And during times of recession this is exactly the sort of ingenuity we need.
Who do you think invented the brick in the toilet tank? Some Yankee do-gooder? (well, maybe.) What about the beverage koozie? huh? Who knows what great discovery the back woods will release on an unsuspecting world. I can barely breathe for the suspense.
Posted by Dave on
by Laurie Avocado
Hemp and marijuana have been so closely related and even referred to interchangeably for so long that the cousins have become a nuisance to each other. For hemp advocates any association with marijuana activists is the kiss of death. State level attempts to legalize industrial hemp have been killed when lobbyists were discovered to have connections across the cannabis isle.
The key distinguishing characteristic between hemp and marijuana, both from the genus and species cannabis sativa L., is the percentage of THC, the psychoactive ingredient. The generally accepted requirement for industrial hemp is 1% THC or less while marijuana contains at least 3% and sometimes 15% or higher. Continue…
Posted by Dave on August 3, 2010
McMansion under construction by merfam
Remember when people where trending on such topics as “downsizing” and “simple living?” It seems like just yesterday. With untold McMansions listing in their weed-infested suburbs across the U.S. it would seem that the time was indeed ripe for reason to reenter our housing market and smaller footprints and more practical usage of square footage to be valued and rewarded. The only problem is that downsizing is easy to talk about and hard to do.
American’s love things big. As my wife and I have listed our 4 bed 3 bath, 1990 sq. ft. home in SLC for sale we have discovered that it is too small to demand top dollar (in our current crappy homes market). I thought such a home would be ideal for all the people who have been talking about downsizing from their 3,000 sq. ft. 3 bed and 3 bath houses. But, apparently there aren’t any such people. What there are, are people who are looking for their first home and finding that 2,000 sq. ft. just isn’t big enough. Continue…
Posted by Dave on May 19, 2010
Hemp held the same precious value for the early Mormon pioneers that it should today, with its multiple uses for fabrics, rope and food (plus much more that we know about now that the Mormons most likely did not). The Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society hosted one of their annual exhibitions in 1860 awarding prizes to farmers for several crops, including hemp. Prizes from 1$ to 5$ were also given out for manufactured farming equipment designed to improve the harvesting and processing of hemp. All of this was recorded in a Deseret News article from January 21st, of 1928.
Brigham Young first gave the challenge to the Mormon people in 1847 to spread out through the area and see which key crops the church could maintain and grow in the arid climate. The Saints tried cotton, flax, corn, wool, hemp and even a brief experiment in silk. Hemp was reported to have grown best in the southeast and the Wasatch Valley.
It doesn’t appear that the Utah Saints grew great amounts of hemp and the experiment had certainly ended by the time the tax act of 1937 was issued. None the less it was proven that hemp could compete with most crops in Utah and even succeed above and beyond some staples. Ironic and sad that the United States eventually outlawed a crop and material that even the Nation of Deseret valued. One hundred and fifty years later we are finally celebrating Hemp History Week in an effort to bring the crop back. Visit Vote Hemp for more info.
Posted by Dave on May 17, 2010
Yeti by Philippe Semeria
The only question in regards to the death of the current green enthusiasm is, “Will the new green fad die via popular adoption, or via wholesale abandonment?” Well, I guess this is the first question, not the only. The second one would be, “What will green living look like when it is either abandoned or adopted?”
An intelligent reader (I know you are out there!) would of course respond, “Well, economical solutions will be adopted while unrealistic and utopian greening will be abandoned.” And while making sense, this sort of reasoning with the American people is redonculous at best and dangerous madness at worst. Just look at corn ethanol, still going strong all these years despite its fairly wide-known economic unfeasibility. And we all know that the milk of the female Yeti could be a financial boon for holistic medicine if someone would just put in the hard work to create a Yeti milking program, or at least learn to synthesize the stuff. Continue…
Posted by Dave on April 29, 2010
Sweatshop in Chicago
Sweatshops. Sounds kind’a nice as I watch the snow fall outside my window here in SLC, in April. Oh, to feel the sweat trickle down the small of my back and then slowly spread along my waistband front and back until it looks like I have thoroughly wet myself. Oh to feel a hard dirt floor with my blistered and cracked feet and to be able to gnaw on my swollen, spongy tongue longing for a cool drink of water. Instead I just sit here at my fancy computer typing away with a hot mug of tea watching this freekin’ frozen crap cling to my grapevines and tulips.
Surely I jest. But seriously, in my quest to discover the truth about global sweatshop numbers and stats I have discovered that this is an idiotic quest. Much more important are the numbers and factors that make sweatshops not only flourish, but attractive. Continue…
Posted by Dave on April 16, 2010
The Harris Tweed Shop
The textile and clothing industry, like every industry, has been facing the green facts. Cotton, the big fiber on the block, is taking its hits. Being half granola and half redneck myself I can feel both sides of the issue. My father and grandfather supported themselves with cotton, yet I like to strut around in nothing but hemp. Good enough.
But as it turns out, cotton makes wonderfully soft and affordable clothing while using relatively high levels of chemicals, resources from the soil and lots of water (during growth and processing). But, if we know all this about cotton, why do we still wear so much of it, and more importantly, why do we keep so much more of it hanging in our closets and tucked into our dressers? Most of us keep buying clothes as if we intend to throw away a brand new green suit once it gets its first bit of pheasant blood on it. Sheesh.
Once again, we can learn something here from our Redneck brothers (I’m not so sure about sisters). Rednecks are particular about their clothing. It has to be functional and affordable. And now, I’m not making light. These are two very serious considerations in clothing that I am not so sure civil folk understand. For a redneck shopper these two dueling forces create a dilemma kin with taming the jackalope. Continue…
Posted by Dave on April 13, 2010
by Alfred T. Palmer
Environmental racism has been coined as an expression describing any policy, practice, or regulation that negatively affects the environment of low-income people. Everyone seems to acknowledge that the poor get the short end of the stick when it comes to negative environmental impacts, but at the same time the broad assumption is made that low-income people simply don’t care about the environment.
Now if I were to say that poor people hate the earth then you would probably cry foul and fill the comment box at the end of this post with vitriol and lingual excrement. But if we are honest, yes, the majority of us well-to-dos operate under a low-level yet constant assumption that low-income individuals (whether rednecks, urban minorities or simply blue-collar) don’t care about issues of sustainability. These assumptions have been built on a long tradition of alienating all brands of low-income folk with hoity-toity environmental clubs and lofty policies built on negative reinforcement. What do I mean? Continue…
Posted by Dave on April 7, 2010
If, like me, you have perused the source material available on-line in regards to hemp usage and economic potential, then you have no doubt come across articles by Lynn Osburn. Lynn Osburn, writing in the early nineties, appears to be the source for around 75% of what current bloggers are saying about hemp and its magical powers and awesome potential. If I don’t find Lynn’s name, then I find sentences that are direct quotes (plagiarized apparently. Oh hempies, where is the shame?)
I don’t know about you, but I would like to know more about the genius behind the modern hemp movement. Besides I have questions like, “Why is noone currently following through with or continuing to build on Osburn’s work from 17 years ago?” And more importantly, “What the frick happened to this guy?” (He is apparently a guy.) Well, this is what I have found so far. Continue…
Posted by Dave on March 29, 2010
One of the big question marks in our floundering economy right now hovers over the idea of human migration trends. Where are people moving to, and why. The key demographic in most conversations about migration trends in the U.S. seem to be young couples and singles between the ages of 25 and 40. Where are these young people moving? And maybe more importantly, what do they want?
The answer, of course, is nobody knows. But I have to write about something, so… let’s say… meaningful and fulfilling lives. But first, where are they moving? States like Texas have had a positive population gain over the last couple of years mostly due to strong energy sector jobs. But let’s face it. As an former resident of Texas, I realize not everyone wants to move to the armpit of hell, Houston.
Many are decrying the fact that young people are fleeing the country like scripted drama from prime time television. But just like prime time TV, there are pockets of CSI, er, young people still finding home in the country. Others, like a recent Wall Street Journal article, talk about the opposite trend.
Continue…
