Getting my Ham Radio License

September 25, 2013

...of Limits conference he held court on some of my favorite forgotten ideas: appropriate technology, fraternal societies and Ham radio. A Ham himself, Greer recommended I read an amazingly odd book, Instruments of Amplification, which actually has directions for building your own transistors from junk. I’ll probably never get around to any of those projects, but I of A may be the ultimate DIY text. But I’m not just being contrarian. I’m looking forw...

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The Elysium Delusion

Mr. Homegrown

August 15, 2013

Thoughtstylings

36 Comments

...rk with what we have. In my cranky opinion, the future is in down-to-earth appropriate technology, not space stations.We need to plant gardens here on earth not in the vacuum of space. I’ll note that the farms in these space colonies look an awful lot like the dystopian factory farms we have down on earth. And we should recognize the space station fantasy for what it is: a materialistic version of a heavenly afterlife, with scientists such as Hawk...

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Steve Solomon’s Soil and Health e-Library

Mr. Homegrown

October 23, 2012

Resources

1 Comment

...h as Sir Albert Howard, J.I. Rodale and Ehrenfried Pfeiffer. The “Homesteading” part of the library contains tomes dating from the 1700s (William Ellis’ The Country Housewife’s Family Companion), all the way to the appropriate technology movement of the 1970s (Gene Logsdon’s Getting Food From Water: A guide to Backyard Aquaculture). So go load up those e-readers. Or maybe print them out in case we have a revolution....

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A Year After the Age of Limits: Mr. Homegrown’s Take

Mr. Homegrown

May 7, 2014

Age of Limits

12 Comments

...nt and discussed many of my favorite topics: organic gardening, Ham radio, appropriate technology, fraternal societies and even letterpress printing. When a talk or activity annoyed me, I’d walk out and find Greer. What I would have liked to have seen at the Age of Limits was a wider range of voices. A few mainstream climate scientists would have been a good start. Instead, we were only hearing the most extreme points of view. One of the organizer...

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The Hugelkultur Question

Mr. Homegrown

November 17, 2014

Gardening, Permaculture

48 Comments

...ecided to post the hugelkultur question to the Garden Professor’s Facebook page. One of those horticulture professors, Linda Chalker-Scott is someone who I seek out when writing a magazine article. A civil discussion ensued on that Facebook page, proving that Facebook is good for something other than angry political screeds and cat videos. A summary of some of the points made: There is no peer reviewed research on hugelkultur. The concept seems to...

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