http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21154137/
Great idea! I loved reading the article, until the reporter mentioned high cost of sodium light bulbs to provide light for growing the plants.
Mr. Bryn Nelson, I'm disappointed. You clearly did not do enough research and are left clueless about new (and old) technologies that would either greatly reduce electricity cost, or remove it altogether.
First, 100% hydroponic is not necessary. Lightweight soil-less mixtures, natural fertilizers such as compost, compost tea, one last run through used coffee grounds (and the left overs go back into compost), seaweed extract, eggshells and many many other things can be used and no chemical fertilizers are needed. Better off being as natural as possible. I know, I know... these techniques cannot feasibly be used on "away missions" from Earth. But I seriously doubt manned missions further in outer space are feasible for a long, long time. I'm more concerned in using this idea here on Earth. No one has yet to see if humans can really survive long outside Earth's electromagnetic field.
Think about it. Water weighs a LOT. All you really need is the soil-less mixtures as a growth medium and then water weekly. Peat moss and other additives in soil-less mixtures are devoid of nutrients. But these can be easily added or grown inside the same building. Seaweed and kelp can be propagated in a water tank and simulated tides via machines. Water from elsewhere in the building can be filtered through this same tank and the live plants will do well in cleaning water. Visit the Ethel M chocolate factory in Las Vegas. There's a desert plant park area outside to see and the water filtration system - all run by plants.
http://www.vegas.com/attractions/off_the_strip/ethelm.html
To simulate wind, use fans.
Install human composting toilets inside for the employees and use that to fertilize the plants as well. Robotic plant care really isn't ideal for many reasons, so it's wise to keep the human element involved.
Most plants can be grown without insect help, like potatoes, carrots, lettuce, onions, etc. But I see a problem with tomatoes, mostly from personal experience. But this can be remedied by a creative "tomato sex" method, either by using a vibrator to simulate bee activity, or manual pollen dusting.
Now we come to power and light. High pressure sodium (HPS) is NOT the answer. Having multiple HPS systems is a recipe for disaster! HPS are fire hazards, high cost, noisy, and eat electricity like it's going out of style. You can look them up online, and some burn 1,000 watts. Ouch!
What's better is the LED lighting system.
http://www.ledgrowlights.com/
http://www.led-grow-master.com/
Need water? No problem.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070604222124.htm
Now for power. Multiple ideas here. The most favorable is Zero Point Energy. This has been proven, and many inventors out there have done this and patented their inventions, only to be suppressed, killed, or go missing. I don't know enough on the technical side of all that, but I know it's possible. The suppression needs to be lifted.
Next in the list is solar or wind energy. It wouldn't take much to power a several story building if LED grow lights, large windows to catch natural light, and energy saving equipment was used.
Need heat? Use Geothermal technology. Also the windows could assist in generating heat, as well as the outside of the building. Or, Nanotechnology in building facades or exterior paint. The Nanotechnology could also provide power for heating systems.
Lastly, any remaining plant material not to be used for consumption must go into a self-contained composting system, which will just go back into the soil-less growth mediums. Zero need for chemical fertilizers.
I hope someone sees this blog entry and re-designs a new building using my ideas. Here's what I'd like to see. I don't want or deserve credit for my ideas. I'd rather see other, more viable technologies used in such a building to help everyone. Although I'd love to work in such a building since I love plants so much. But most importantly, these types of buildings must not be a huge cash cow. We must be more concerned with providing nutritional, non-GM food products for all, in the cheapest method possible. Although start-up costs will be huge, the power-saving techniques mentioned will pay for themselves quickly. Profits can go into building new systems in other places and eventually sprout all over the planet. From there, we can use previously farmed lots for other things besides farming and prevent wrecking the planet's soil further.
Basement: Grow gourmet mushrooms. Have a storage area for mushroom spawning, seeds and germination testing. (Veseys seeds uses small systems for testing germination, for example.) Install battery back ups from solar/wind energy devices. A water treatment system combined with propagating kelp and seaweed or other water plants. Certain kinds of fish as well can be used in this tank, for tourism/teaching purposes. Controls for Geothermal can also be installed in the basement. Self-contained, non-smelling rotating composting equipment as well, powered by the many energy systems. Perhaps elevators too, to transport compost to other floors.
Ground floor: Grow baby/leafy greens, herbs, and short-term vegetables here like cucumber, radish, green onions, etc. Possibly a laboratory as well, for cloning and method testing. Don't really need a ton of seeds when you can use lab methods for encouraging natural plant cloning abilities and create thousands of plants from a single plant. This is already being done in the flower industry.
2nd floor: 30-60 day crops. Pole beans, wax beans, tomatoes, etc.
3rd floor: Root crops. Carrot, onion, potato, turnip, etc.
4th floor: Larger, long term crops. Broccoli, cabbage, kale.
5th floor: Tall crops like corn.
6th floor and higher: Grains for flour, etc.
These are just ideas and examples of how I feel it would work best. Further study is needed. But above all, it CAN be done.
Visit http://www.thevenusproject.com/ for further ideas on this line of thinking.
Shock Doctrine
What is this? I just happened across some YouTube videos at random and watched a few.
Shock Doctrine is a book written by a brave woman by the name of Naomi Klein. One of her videos will be at the bottom of this post.
In a nutshell, what she's trying to say is that the elite of this planet either act upon, or create disasters in order to further their agenda of control, fear and make their pocketbooks thicker. Klein talks about three major events in her book and lectures and encourages people to research "history" for themselves.
The elite rely on the "shock value." Where have we seen this concept recently? How about the routines that we all saw on mass media with flashing, fancy computer graphics promoting fear?
This concept is nothing new.... far from new. Klein is just taking another look at it from another perspective, and is being continuously attacked for her work.
Another author, Barbara Hand Clow, wrote a book "Catastrophobia." In this book, she mentions how over 10,000 years ago, the planet experienced a massive event that shocked the human population at that time. Then, either a person, or group of people, or perhaps ETs took advantage of the situation in order to gain control and power.
I don't buy into the whole ET thing because I've never seen any, or experienced anything "out of this world." I can only think of what Carl Sagan used to say. Something to the effect that we have all this mass space out there, populated by billions of stars and planets. A line in Sagan's story "Contact" was, "sure would be a waste of space."
Anyway, it's been occuring on our planet as long as anyone can remember, and the ancient texts tell us. Someone or some thing has been controlling humans via shock and fear, promising to "save" humanity and protect us. And we've been falling for it ever since. Humans never seem to want to take responsibility and are always looking outside of themselves for a "saviour."
Cleaning With Toxins Isn't Really Cleaning
I've been saying this for a long time, but no one ever believed me it seems.
It all started when I received, as a gift, a bar of handmade, natural soap. Before that I had been using store products for body cleansing. My mother also sold Avon so I always got to try the newest stuff there and had been exposed to a lot of "beauty products."
I noticed a great change in my skin after using that bar of handmade soap. Then it eventually disappeared and I was left with no more. I went back to store bought soaps. Big mistake.
My skin began to erupt with tiny red dots and it felt inflamed, itchy, dry, sore and tight. Ugh. Something had to be done.
So I did the research and began to learn how to make my own natural homemade soap using only vegetable oils and sodium hydroxide as the catalyst to make it all happen. My first few trials were a disaster because it was a learning curve. Turns out I had not used the correct recipes and so found, by sheer luck, some breakdown scientific information about the chemical components of oils which are fatty acids.
Anyhow, I finally began to make perfect soap and began using it again. My skin became soft, moisturized and in general it felt great.
Shortly thereafter, I began to notice that every time I went to the store and walked down the detergent/cleaning agent aisles I would get a headache. This had never occured before. What could be the meaning of this "sudden" change in my body's reaction to these chemicals?
More research revealed that skin is our largest body organ. Whatever touches our skin, it sinks inside the body and gets moved around and processed by the inner organs, blood and tissues.
In short, what had occured after I began using homemade soap, my body became sensitized. It had gone through a period of not having the chemical cocktail of store "soap" and when it came into contact with these other chemicals, it reacted in some not very nice ways. My body was telling me those other chemicals were bad. I began to listen.
For cleaning my house, I still use a dishwashing detergent but am picky about what I use. Some are worse than others. The only brand I can take, since I was dishes by hand, is Palmolive. In the old days this product was made with a combination of.... Palm oil and Olive oil, thus the name. Now, of course, they don't use those oils and it's all detergents, derived from petroleum. Anyhow, that product doesn't bother my skin at all despite its chemical origins.
You may ask why not use my own soap to wash dishes? The answer is simple. Safety. Handmade soap retains the natrually occuring chemical byproduct of glycerin, and if used in a dish washing session, it puts a mild film of glycerin on the dishes and glasses and makes them slippery. You can damage a lot more than just dishes this way. Could end up with broken glasses and cut hands pretty quickly. My stonewear dishes bear the proof of this because at one time I did wash dishes with my own soap shavings and hot water. There's a few nicks and breaks on a few plates, and I broke a lot of drinking glasses this way. lol Lesson learned.
For other household cleaning, I can't keep away from bleach though. I use it diluted with water in a spray bottle to disinfect my kitchen and bathroom. It really helps keep the cutting boards and utensils clean especially after working with raw chicken, meat and fish.
For the walls, cabinetry and other surfaces I only use Murphy's Oil Soap. For the floor (we have all wood floors in most of the house) I use a weak solution of bleach and water. Wood floors don't get that dirty anyway since there's nothing for spills to hang on and stain. Most of the time a vacuum and damp mop is all that's needed, not chemicals. But once in a blue moon I do use bleach water for the floors, especially in the washrooms.
On windows, I still use Windex. Can't keep from using it. The vinegar spray thing doesn't work as well I find. We have a wood burning cast iron stove and it deposits a film on the windows that can be sticky. I find there's more effort and work with the vinegar than just the Windex.
But overall, I've drastically reduced the amount of cleaning supplies in my house. So the only items on the list are bleach, Windex, dish detergent and Murphy's Oil Soap. A far cry from other households, eh? Once in a while I use a S.O.S. steel wool pad. Sometimes I can't wash off baked on gunk from my oven baking pans without it.
How many commercials do you see out there? Kitchen cleaners, bathroom cleaners, floor cleaners... cleaners for one surface, or another surface. By the time people get sucked into all these commercials and fill their houses with the multitude of products, they've got quite the chemical disaster in the making.
Remember Hurricane Katrina? Just think of the bottles of chemicals in all the houses that got flooded. Now, imagine all the chemicals spilling and mixing together with the flood waters. Ugh. Now you know why so many people got sick and died. It wasn't all just because of the water was it? Something to think about.
Experienced a dream early this morning. It was such a dream as I've never had before, at least not in my conscious memory.
In this dream, I was in some sort of supermarket. I was buying HUGE candles. They must have been 2 feet across.
Anyway, while at the register getting these candles, I turn and see a man standing not far away. He seems familiar to me somehow. So I finish my candle purchase and walk over to the man.
As I look at him, he reminded me of the grandfather I never got to meet, because he was murdered before I was born. I've seen pictures of him from long ago, but even the photos were a fuzzy memory.
So I took a chance. I asked him, "Is your name _________." And he replied that it was his first name. Then I asked, "Do you still live in __________?" (I'm leaving this info out because I don't like sharing family information online.) He said that he didn't live there any more.
Then for no other particular reason, I decided to just get to the point and tell him what I wanted him to know.
I told him my name, my parents name and that he was my grandfather. I told him that something happened to him before I was conceived... and that he was dead.
He wanted to know if he was dead how did I know it and why did I even say anything to him about it.
I never got to answer this because he put his hand in his pocket, withdrew it and tossed a bunch of coins in the air and left. I bent down to look at these coins. Like no coins I've ever seen before. I knew they were money but...they were all concave, or little domes. Not flat like normal coins. Strange.
Anyway, like with all dreams...who knows if it was real or not. I haven't the foggiest.... If it was real, I hoped I helped in some way. Maybe he didn't know he was dead. *shrug*
And no, I didn't have any Cream of Wheat before bed. lol Got tired of it after having it for three nights.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080307A.shtml
Click on that link to watch a video at the top of the page.
WTF!!
First of all, I cannot express (cleanly) in words how much I disapprove of ANY organized religion.
Religion and government take the place of parents once you reach the age of maturity. Everyone looks to have someone else "save" them from any and all things.
Wake up world!!! Please wake up... It pains me to see this all happening.
I'll go ahead and say it. There is no saviour. There's going to be no one who will "come down" to Earth and save your butts. If there is any attempt as such, it is your job to discern the intent and purpose of any being who says he/she/it is here to save you/us. We've been programmed to accept the idea of Apocalypse and those in charge on the planet will make damn sure we all get to experience that.
Think about it. There were many scholars supposedly alive around the time Jesus was said to have existed. As it's said in the Zeitgeist movie, there's enough material from those scholars to fill a library. Jesus was supposed to have fed many people with two fish and five loaves... walked on water.. healed people.. turned water into wine. Now, if this was true then someone somewhere must have chronicled it. But did they? No. No one can find any evidence this person existed except for religious texts. And these texts were MAN MADE. God didn't write the books. Angels didn't write the books. MAN wrote the books.
These days, if Paris Hilton sneezes and accidentally shits herself, I guarantee the media will be all over that story. And it's no miracle... people shit every day. But Jesus.. wow... you would think there'd be all sorts of written material on him, now wouldn't you?? But there's none. You'd think that if there were, the churches of the world would make sure they shoved that material in your face. But you hear nothing of it and are expected to believe it all on faith.
Wake up!! Religion is all over the planet to control you, period. It's to treat you like mushrooms... to keep you in the dark and feed you crap.
I'm not saying I don't believe in a Supreme Being or Divine Force. I do. But not in the way that it's portrayed in religion. I take the Theosophic point of view. We were once at one with the all, but then left the All willingly to experience other things. Knowing full well what we were getting into and what it might entail. Then somewhere along the way, we would make our way back to the All.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. You have people in top military and government positions going around claiming to be "Christians" and having bible studies and loving the Lord. Ummmm..... ok.
If the Bible is real, then there's these things called the 10 Commandments. One of them is "Thou shalt not kill." I know my bible stuff, I was raised as a Southern Baptist.
So, if we're not supposed to kill, how in the hell do these people sleep at night?!?!? They purposefully kill other members of our human race and then have the audacity to say they are Godly people?
*breathe*
Am I the only one who sees this?
*sigh*
Anyway, I've been wanting to add this video for a while. Good 'ol Don Henley. This song comes from the album of the same name "Inside Job." It was released in 2000, before that horrible day. I didn't see it coming. I was blind.. so very blind. But Henley, I have to commend him for having the insight and sharing it with us all. If I could ever meet that man in person, I'd love to spend hours and hours picking his brain and asking all sorts of questions. Not about him, not about his music, but about the knowledge he holds. But, as they say, the music is probably the best medium.
Internet Censorship
Senator Ted Stevens showed the world back in 2006 that he didn't understand the Internet AT ALL. He called it a "series of tubes." Well, I guess he wasn't entirely incorrect, seeing as though most internet traffic goes through fiber optics or satellite feed. And fiber optics are little "tubes." But I digress...
Basically, in that speech, I feel he was trying to make the point that people download "stuff" on the net all the time. 'Tis true!! I personally love technology and can't believe the progress it has made over the years. And I'm happy that vast amount of information are available over the internet. People can finally self-publish their writings, look up any amount of data, research, and meet other like-minded people who share the same ideals and goals.
But you see, the government doesn't like this. In short form, they don't like anything going out to the people that cannot be metered, controlled, measured, censored and billed. That's why we don't have free energy now, because you cannot meter the sun and charge for its life-giving rays. You cannot meter the wind and put a price tag on it.
Sure, the internet is billed to customers, but at an unlimited rate. You can stay on as long as you want. You can keep your computer on 24/7/365 and still only pay a flat rate.
Here's the biggest trouble, IMO. The Truth Movement. These folks are left with only the internet as a means to share their opinions, disagreements, protests, etc. This is due to the media being controlled by a handful of individuals. Not parent companies, but individuals. Do the research. Remember back in the late 80s to early 90s the whole thing about "deregulation" and all these new companies started to pop up? Now, there's a series of mergers and each company is being consolidated back to the way it was before deregulation.
Sites like MySpace and YouTube started to pop up. Then, Mr. Murdoch bought out MySpace and Google bought out YouTube. Time and time again these sites have censored information that was not "approved" by the mass media, i.e. government.
And then now, there's a push to censor and control the internet! Politicians, in my opinion, hate the internet because it records everything they say and then they can't turn around and deny they ever said it. Take the Foley deal for example. He was seen on America's Most Wanted, pushing for legislation to stop child abuse, and especially sex abuse. Then he's found out flirting with young minor males and ends up being the same type of criminal he said he wanted to fight against!
The famous Sen. Stevens is back! This time, he's hiding behind children. He's proposing a total control over the internet to "protect children." Riiiiiiiiight. Isn't it the role of a parent to monitor/supervise/protect children? When did the government become involed? Ah... but that's another story for another day.
Pay close attention to what George Carlin has to say, especially about children.
What's going to end up happening is there will be a total end to the Truth Movement on the internet if this passes. There's going to be riders tacked on to the end of the bill, that almost none of the Senators/Congressmen will ever set eyes on and it will pass. Effectively, no one will be able to find alternative information and will be forced to listen to the endless drabble and senselessness the corporate media spews every day.
Read more at:
This is named lily "Coral Sunrise." Lilies are named and registered at the NALS - The North American Lily Society. http://www.lilies.org/
This is "Brushstroke." I've noticed with this variety, sometimes it puts out only four petals instead of the normal six. See the one in the lower left? It's another four petal version. *shrug* Don't know why this occurs. Come to think of it, the one in the foreground seems only have five petals. Funky! Lilium should always have six petals in two triangle forms, one pointing opposite the other, kinda like what everyone calls the Star of David, or more correctly named, the Tetrahedron of the Platonic Solids.
A bunch of plain white Asiatics.
I incorrectly named this in a previous post. This is Bee Balm, a medicinal plant, and supposedly hummingbirds like it. Also called Wild Bergamot. Latin name Monarda fistulosa L., Lamiaceae. A funky flower anyhow.
The North American First Nations people used Monarda for stomachaches, headaches, fever, and menstrual cramps. The essential oil is used in aromatherapy as a herbal tea, and as a fragrance in perfume and soaps.
This is Calendula Officinalis. Also a medicinal plant. Good for skin problems. I infuse this in virgin olive oil or almond oil for skin applications. Petals only. I cut the flowers and let them dry naturally in a darkened room near a fan. Very vigorous plants, blooming from late July all the way until the snow starts to beat them down in November. Seeds look like little worms. Each flower head can product over 50-100 seeds each.
This is my attempt at a wildflower type shot. Hard to get clear photos these days when trying to keep the black flies from biting. Looks like a ritual dance sometimes keeping the flies away. LOL The blue flowers are Bachelors Buttons and the Calendula in the background with a white lily bud in the foreground.
Lilies are kinda limited in colours. Red, orange, yellow, white, pink and various combinations of those colors. Some with spots, some without. Some are dwarf, while others can reach heights of over six to sevel feet tall!! Some blooms are tiny, such as the Martagons (of which I have none) and some are quite large, such as the Orienpets (also have none of those), which are a combination of Trumpet and Oriental lily. Some are VERY fragrant (Oriental - like in my avatar pic) and some have no scent at all. Lots of types.. can be confusing knowing what's what. The NALS website listed above discusses all this if you want to learn more about this lovely plant species.
