Searching for Energy Vampires

...ay to keep us connected and dependent! Our old microwave consumes the next greatest amount of power at $3.88 a year. The microwave should definitely be shut off when not in use. It’s also old and I suspect newer models probably consume less power when not in use. Speaking of newer gadgets, our ginormous Costo flat screen TV (they give them away when you buy a slice of pizza) doesn’t seem to use measurable power when turned off. And that flat scree...

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Make Your Own Damn Cheese

We live in a country where buckets have warnings on them, but the greatest indignity of our present nanny state is that the Man does not want us to eat raw cheese. As Jean Anthelme Brillat–Savarin put it, “A meal without cheese is like a beautiful woman who lacks an eye” and if that cheese was made with crappy pasteurized, homogenized and sterilized milk it ain’t worth eating. That’s why you’ve got to make your own cheese. We forget, in our age o...

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Tiny House Dweller as Contemporary Hermit in the Garden

...about a reaction to the spiritual malaise caused by consumer culture. The greatest expense in building a house are the kitchen and bathroom. Walls are cheap so you might as well make some extra space. Thus, in economic terms, a small house rather than a tiny house makes more sense. But the tiny house movement is not about economics. It is, in part, an attempt to, in the words of the Joni Mitchell song to get “back to the garden.” In this way, the...

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Essential System #4 – Illumination

...reate less greenhouse gas. Remember that power plants are America’s single greatest producer of greenhouse gases. And as far as conservation goes, it’s estimated that if every American replaced one bulb with a compact fluorescent it would be the energy equivalent of taking 1.3 million cars off the road. But back to LEDs. For emergency purposes it might be wise to have a Forever Flashlight that requires no batteries. You shake the thing back and fo...

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