Via How to be a Retronaut, a roundup of 1960s fallout shelter ads.
Also, see an old post of ours for nifty plans from FEMA on how you can make a combination bar and fallout shelter.
Picture Sundays: Fallout Shelter
Author: Mr. Homegrown
Saturday’s Quote: Nassim Taleb
“For the robust, an error is information; for the fragile, an error is an error.”
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Media Fasting
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| Ant Farm’s Media Burn |
For the last year I’ve been trying, as an experiment, to see what it would be like to cut off the news. That means no newspaper, no Google news, no NPR, no broadcast television of any kind.
At the beginning of my media fast, I was concerned that I would somehow lose touch with reality, with important details of what’s going on in the world. In fact, some news does reach me, filtered through conversations with friends and family. And I have, thanks to local blogs, kept in touch with some neighborhood news. But the torrent of irrelevant details on the scandals, murders, wars and political intrigue of modern life no longer cross the threshold of my consciousness.
Yes, as citizens of whatever country we find ourselves in, we have a duty to be engaged in political change. But I believe that most of us are better off focusing on politics at the local level where our voices can actually make a difference. I really like the stoic flowchart Mark Frauenfelder posted on BoingBoing some time ago. It works really well for deciding if a particular political situation is worth paying attention to:
I want to be abundantly clear that I am not a Luddite. Communications technology, especially the internet, have an important role in making this world a better place. But we have the power to be the gatekeeper of that information. What we feed into our higher consciousness has the power to change ourselves and the world for the better.
If you’ve tried a media fast, or disagree completely with the concept, leave a comment.
Inspiration for my media fast came from an episode of the C-Realm podcast–an interview with Neal Kramer, entitled “Grasp the Nettle“.
Giveaway: The New Sunset Western Garden Book
We’ve got five copies of the The New Sunset Western Garden Book to give away to lucky readers. All you have to do is leave a comment here telling us where you live (not your address, but your city or region) and name your favorite tomato variety. This way we’ll build a list of the best tomatoes to help everyone with their summer selections.
Tuesday, March 6th we’ll announce the five winners here by the name they leave in the comments–so no anonymous entries, please. We’ll work out delivery details from there.
Please be aware that this book is written for gardeners who live the western portion of North America: California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alberta, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, or New Mexico.
Book Review: The New Sunset Western Garden Book
The Sunset Western Garden Book was one of the first gardening books we picked up when we bought our house back in 1998. A new version is out this month, now dubbed The New Sunset Western Garden Book, and it’s a significant improvement over our old copy.
Lavish photos have replaced the drawings of my 1998 copy. The new edition has significantly more coverage of edibles, including a vegetable planting schedule as well as nice photographs of veggies worked into ornamental landscaping schemes. One of the improvements I’m most pleased to see are lists of plants for attracting bees, butterflies, birds and beneficial insects. And Hawaii, Alaska southern British Columbia and Alberta residents will be happy to find their states and provinces included. I also find Sunset’s zone system more useful than USDA zones.
I have a few minor quibbles with some of the advice. Adding compost when planting trees is not a good idea. Neither is solarizing. And, speaking as a beekeeper, I would never recommend using imidacloprid under any circumstances. I am happy to see invasive pampas grass moved from “maybe don’t grow” to “definitely don’t grow.”
But it’s the plant list that forms the heart of this book. Even though much of this information on the internet now, I still prefer to get it in book form. I trust the curatorial expertise of Sunset’s editors and the climate specific advice for those of us in the Western US. And the plant lists are still extremely valuable when planning a new garden or remodeling an old one.
ETA: Check out Sunset’s handy online plant finder.
We’ll be giving away six copies of the The New Sunset Western Garden Book tomorrow. Stay tuned!