Age of Apocalypse

May 31, 2013

...the time comes to get back to work, to monitor all those tweets, Facebook updates and text messages. The return to civilization from this weekend’s Age of Limits conference, held in a pristine wilderness area in Pennsylvania was especially jarring. One moment we were in wilderness, the next we were queuing up for the TSA’s carefully stage managed Security Theater show at Dulles airport. Thanks to the TSA, fear has never been so slick and high tec...

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Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Dealing With the Crisis of Overconnection

Mr. Homegrown

February 19, 2013

Reviews, Thoughtstylings

1 Comment

...n recent months I’ve found myself pulled into a vortex of emails, Facebook updates, Twitter feeds and just plain mindless internet surfing sessions. Let’s face it, the screens in our lives are highly addictive and who among us actually feels better after an info-crack bender? Published in 2010, William Power’s Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age , is a reasonable, balanced and practical guide to...

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Seeds the Game

Mr. Homegrown

December 22, 2014

Thoughtstylings

1 Comment

...urage you to, according to the description on their website: Take photos of your plants at home, filter and share your attention to your real garden. Find neighbors to trade seeds with and share activities related to gardening and local food systems. Get climate and map updates for weather patterns relevant to your area and garden needs. Seed points redeem for real prizes like seeds and coupons for garden equipment. Grow your own food and learn pr...

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Moonshine

Mr. Homegrown

September 15, 2007

Fermentation, Food

...preferably from a source that will lend itself to a pretty picture on the label — bottle it, and you’re in the vodka business.” As it turns out there is an art to good homemade moonshine — a far cry from the soulless mouthwash Archer-Daniels-Midlands turns out. Here’s some excerpts from an interview of ex-moonshiner John Bowman conducted by the Coal River Folklife Project from “Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia...

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Are Miniature Books the New Smartphone?

Mr. Homegrown

October 17, 2016

Thoughtstylings

10 Comments

...years around the time of Constantine. So far it’s even more lurid than the updates on our current presidential election I get when I glace at the iPhone. Yes, you can read books on a smartphone, but I still think that the medium of a paper book lends itself to developing a greater ability to focus. And as Cal Newport suggests, anyone who can focus on a problem in depth for a long period of time will be more valuable than those of us with the atten...

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