Book Review: The Blood of the Earth: An Essay on Magic and Peak Oil

...P it is no steal, either. All forms of the book are available on this here page. The paperback version is (sorta)(sometimes) available at Amazon. A good, free way to get to know Geer’s thinking is to read the archive of his weekly blog, The Archdruid Report. Right now he’s doing something a little different, a series of fictional pieces to illustrate an idea, but you’ll find many of the concepts from The Blood of the Earth in his blog posts, espec...

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By Hand and Eye

...lden section, for instance, and the shelf spacing came from an exercise on page 131 of the book. Far from being restrictive, I found the principles in Walker and Tolpin’s book liberating. I now had a starting point for any design project. For modern folks it’s difficult to imagine working without a ruler. Walker and Toplin explain, Instead of asking, “How high is this base dimension in inches?” pre-industrial artisans would have asked, “How tall i...

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Spam Poetry Sunday

...us is the ultimate purpose of these spam comments. This one was placed on our announcement for our upcoming coffee roasting class (not a popular or highly linked post), and linked to a page for a restaurant which is obviously just a place holder, in that it has no content or history or graphic design. And who the heck is Janet?...

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089 The New Wildcrafted Cuisine with Pascal Baudar

...r eating insects harvesting your own sea salt fermenting with sea salt primitive fermentation rosin baked potatoes fermented hot sauces ethics of foraging You can take a class with Pascal via urbanoutdoorskills.com and make sure to check out Pascal’s amazing Facebook page. If you’d like to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected]. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes...

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The Practical Side of Philosophy

How did I get through my entire education without studying so much as a page of philosophy? It is, after all, the foundation of all human knowledge. In desperate act of catch-up, I’ve attempted in the past few years an often difficult program of philosophical and theological self-study. Now, before you think I’ve gone way off topic on a homesteading blog, let me counter with a few examples of how philosophy can help navigate thorny DIY questions:...

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