interesting book on earthworms and politics

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/oliver/oliverToC.html

There must be something wrong somewhere -- Nature's laws governing these errors -- What is wrong when we have so many human ills? -- When we have want in a land of plenty? -- Why not old age pensions? -- Why poultry dies young -- The earthworm as an answer


George Oliver spent his life studying earthworms and designing uses for them and their products as well as designing systems to cultivate them effectively. Then he writes a book as an older man detailing what is wrong with society and sets forth in a logical manner to argue that earthworms and natures laws can help solve societies problems (big business tyranny, greedy politicians, etc.). Ahead of his time?


"And again we may safely turn to Nature. She does not permit monopoly. Nowhere in either the animal or plant kingdoms will one find monopolistic tendencies. Monopoly, political, industrial or economic, while it is undoubtedly beneficial to a few, is destructive to the mass. In the final analysis, monopoly is self-destructive, and any system that has within it the germ of self-destruction brings widespread disorder to other systems directly or indirectly related to it. Essentially, monopoly is a form of greed and the similarity is decidedly, if amusingly expressed, by calling the reader's attention to a pig pen at feeding time. Invariably, the fattest porker will push and shove and shoulder its way to the feed trough. Greedily it comes very close to monopolizing all the available food. Thus it grows faster and fatter than the others in the same pen -- and reaches the slaughterhouse first! Here we observe how greed and monopoly ultimately does lead to destruction."


later at the end of lesson 3, yes I think I will read the whole book:



I call this cross between the orchard and compost worm "Soilution". Its chief features are:

1. A prolific breeder.
2. A free animal, no longer a slave to one environment.
3. Its castings never form objectionable mounds above the surface of the soil.
4. It is not an extensive traveler or migrator.
5. It makes exceptionally good fish bait, for it is lively and lives for many hours when impaled on a fish hook.

This is the second time I've mentioned this site (journeytoforever.org). They seem to be an excellent resource on small to medium scale application and uses of alternative technologies and waste reutilization. I am embarking on the path of making biodiesel personally and because I believe in house production of it can represent a significant cost savings in the long run for transportation costs.






idearations in my head...

Biogas reactors

Composting toilets suck, or at least the ones I've used. I know I've owned and used one for over a year. They also generate a lot of noxious gases and odors which are many times more harmful to the atmosphere than CO2. Methane is the primary gas we are interested in because it's also a fairly good direct substitute for natural gas.

Biogas generators are in use in India and China. They are simple brick enclosures. I will be posting more about my research into them here. The gas is often used for cooking. Biogas digested biological materials are also useful as fertilizer. There may be prohibitions against their use with human waste, but I'm thinking of personal size units which could supply a rural household with gas for heating/cooking/electricity from garden/animal waste. There would be many benefits and essentially no waste as the methane is collected and burned which turns it into CO2 and water which is a much less harmful greenhouse gas. The left over digested material could be used for fertilizer and so the carbon released by the biogas would be re-sequestered each year with the growth and harvest of crops. Incidentally biogas burners are often used in green houses to keep them warm and provide co2

Apparently you need water filtration of some kind if you want to use the gas for anything other than rudimentary heat/burning due to corrosive compounds and water in the collected product. I need to look into whether this produces an unusable water stream, if the filter water can be used for irrigation with no ill effects to food it would be ideal.

A business critique for the Government

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chart_1.png

This chart may have a clue as to why inequality is so rampant in american society today. If you look at it you will also notice that our current tax rate is quite similar to the tax rates in the late 20's. From other accounts it can be noted that their where several small recessions in the two decades leading up to 1929. Little was done at that time except to juice (discounted borrowing etc.) the economy onward, kind of like what we're doing now. Very little structural changes where made. During the great depression and in the lead up and aftermath to world war 2 we made huge changes in tax structure and incentive programs, such as VA loans, the creation of Fannie may TVA, etc. Now I'm not sure how I feel as a free market about subsidized house purchase, as that is what got us into part of our current mess. Though it did work quite well during the first 50 years it was around before large scale abuses set in.

Another problem; many view the government as counter cyclical, able to carry the slack when businesses fail. This does not mean to bail them out like what happened on wall street, but to institute programs for he citizens that help to soften the harsh bottom of a recession. Cutting government spending is often seen as a bad idea. Currently they are using the fed in a sort of "trickle down" attempt to spur the economy, but we all know how trickle down economics comes out, richer rich. It will also lead to wide scale inflation, which is a tax that falls heavily on the poorest. However if you've got 1 billion dollars and the price of everything doubles, you're still doing alright because it's like you still have 500 million. However if you have say 100,000 and that suddenly becomes 50,000 you're going to have trouble paying for college.

There are many other problems, but a low tax rate for the rich, combined with a government structure which protects capital while vilifying labor and ignoring the common man is not a sustainable system.

Ocean Fish Farm (but not in the ocean)

First some facts:

This idea would require quite a bit of financial and educational capital. Particularly in order to make it completely planet friendly. However nearly every output would be utilized in some form.

Salt water fish can survive a wide range of salinity as long as they are acclimated gradually. They in fact can grow better in slightly lower than ocean saline as their organs for maintaining osmotic balance are less taxed.

Fish are good to eat.

Fish are becoming scarce and catch bans and limits are occurring.

The oceans are becoming increasingly polluted with heavy metals and other compounds that we don't fully understand. EX: mercury

Many ornamental saltwater fish are kept in aquariums and other types of fish are kept in large public aquariums very successfully. I enjoyed this hobby for many years. Corals are also kept in this way.

Seaweed is a component of sushi, which conveniently also contains fish. Seaweed also absorbs nitrogen a major component in fish waste.

Salt, sea salt in particular is a common seasoning. However if sea salt is made from evaporated ocean waters wouldn't it also contain the heavy metals already in sea water.

Synthetic sea salts exist, I am not sure if they are mixed from constituent parts. I believe they could be.

With an advanced lab one could monitor the levels of many if not all of the trace minerals in a tank and dose each as needed to maintain a balance.

The Plan (and some more facts):
Create a three tank system.

1. Tank one would have the fish you where raising for eventual consumption.
Preferably choose a fish that is under strict or complete commercial limitation and is also a high priced fish in restaurants and possibly sushi bars.

2. Tank two would be a media of some sort for nitrification bacteria to colonize. (bio balls)

3. Tank three would have seaweed that is commonly used in sushi.

The lab could monitor the levels of trace minerals and salinity with the use of instruments and tests. When a mineral or minerals where found deficient they could be added to maintain adequate levels. When water replacement became necessary because of gross imbalance in mineral levels or inadequacy of monitoring, the water removed could be evaporated in pans to provide (1) evaporative cooling for the tanks and (2) synthetic heavy metal free sea salt.

Feed fish, harvest sea weed, harvest fish and sell to sushi and other seafood stores and as fish food for home aquarists. Rinsing sea weed  before packaging will most likely reveal many arthropods and other organisms provided the tank has been well seeded with microbiology. As long as the sea weed is not harvested all at once these organisms will repopulate as the sea weed does, thus the rinsed of organisms can be added directly to the fish tank as food. The fish would obviously be fed and this would be the nutrient source for the algae. If the content of nitrogen was a concern in the synthetic sea salt from water changes it could be held in the algae tank in order that it could be broken down.

This would require quite a bit of R&D which would be best guided by someone with a strong background in large scale fish husbandry such as a large public aquarium. An engineer and/or chemist might also be needed for the lab and tank design.

One of the companies or universities that produce synthetic sea salts would be a likely partner such as Instant Ocean or Red Sea.

Another partner could be one of the black sludge/mineral mud (sounds worse than it is) purveyors who have been trying to pioneer the algae filter idea.

Admittedly this idea is somewhat fanciful, but so is raising multiple ornamental reef fish and corals in my living room. I've done it in the living room, I believe it could be possible on a large scale.

The challenges (and costs) are large but the ability to offer a fish or fishes that are banned from sale in an environmentally sensitive way will have yuppy sushi eating hippies throwing money at you. You might also sign up quite a few health food nuts as offering mercury free fish is a huge plus.

~idearator

Thrifty shopper

Website where anyone can post the price of a given product and do a search for the price of a product at local retailers. The retailers would (eventually?) post their prices voluntarily in order to encourage people to visit.

Retailers could advertise for pay, but prices would still be listed regardless. (I imagine retailers trying to plug other options such as selection and fast checkout time)

Ability to create a shopping list and then find the cheapest retailer that has all of the items listed.

Bar code photo to identify product for search/posting?

Optimized for smart phones so people can do a search on the run.

Overlay on google maps with price and relative location.

Begin in one city and then spread, similar to craigslist.

Original creator would need to run around and update prices until a decent group of followers occurred.

Internet marketing to show at top of searches for products and retailers.

Iphone/droid App?

 Everyone wants to save money, so I'd imagine once a base has been established it would become popular. Feel like doing this in bullet form:

~idearator

Shopping/todo multiuser list App for iphone/android

I was shopping with my wife and we where trying to grab things as efficiently as possible by dividing up the list and then meeting up with our set of items. The difficulty is that we have to constantly meet up and see who has what in order to make sure we don't end up with two of anything. One way to deal with this is for one person to start at the bottom of the list and the other to work from the top, but it still requires checking in (physically finding someone in a crowded store) to see who has what.

Now what if there was a list program for our phones which you could check off items and then have that check off transmitted to the other device. This way you could see which items your partner had grabbed and then grab ones which they have not. This could also be applied more generally to chores or errands or project management, anything that requires more than one person coordinate in order to accomplish the task. Basecamp is a project management service that has a todo list somewhat like this, but it is a website and not structured as a simple app. Basecamp has too many features and thus the convenience is reduced by having to set it up. Basecamp also costs a monthly fee which is non-trivial.

bonus points for a simple "claim" system where a person can claim an item or todo so that both parties aren't trying to complete the same item.

The key with this is simplicity and ease of use. It must be easy to check off and to "claim" items on the list. The transfer between devices must be relatively fast (3g should be able to hand this I hope). If the devices where being used in relatively close proximity it might be more efficient to directly connect between them with an adhoc network. Hoever functionality over the net would be ideal for expanding the applications: i.e. two delivery drivers working routes able to update/change routes based on traffic etc.

You could add change permissions and a hierarchical structure if you where tailoring this to a business type environment.

There seem to be quite a few todo list apps on the iphone store, however none of them seem to really focus on the real time coordination that I am ideating here. It may be too difficult due to lag times, but the data transmitted could be very simple an index # and a check with a verifier returned from the alternate device. I found one that syncs with other copies of itself, but I'm not sure how real time it is. Regardless I just post the ideas, don't verify them. Ideally they could sync cross platform irt so that a person with an android could work with one with an iphone.

Indoor Dog Park

So it was raining for the past few days and the dog really didn't get the number or duration of walks which she would have gotten had it been nice out. I thought perhaps an indoor dog park could be the solution. I did a quick google search and found that they do exist but are by no means pervasive across the US. The ideal indoor dog park would have both a large public area for general use at a nominal fee. There could then be additional upgrades such as private play areas for fetch, personal time and training. A cafe and a grooming center would be a serious plus. A track for running with murals painted would also be nice for those who like to run with their dogs. Any warehouse space could be converted, but careful attention would need to be paid to security and patrons would have to either pay a nominal fee or sign up for a subscription type membership. The subscription option would help maintain a consistent income stream once the park was operational.

Bonus points if it includes a biogas generator that utilizes all of the doggy waste to produce heat/cooling for the facility.