On the 100th Birthday of Our House: The Past and Future of Housing in the U.S.

...ncrease in square footage and more consumer electronics. These differences lead to a difficult discussion about what a more energy efficient future might look like. Our future might be less about energy efficient tiny houses and more about sharing an apartment with relatives. Or getting your not-in-my-backyard neighbors to agree to a bus-only lane on an already congested boulevard. Or democratizing the workplace to ask for fewer hours for more pay...

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Meet the Solavore Sport Solar Oven

...our first trial, and had trouble getting the oven up to cooking temp–which lead to a lentil disaster. I failed to notice the lid clips were there at all first time out because they are not immediately obvious. They are small metal hooks which are permanently affixed through holes in the oven’s body. They come up over the lip of the lid to hold it down tight. The good thing about these clips is that they are very simple and would be easy to replace...

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The Ultimate Earth Bed: A Mattress Made of Sand

...sessed with the idea of a mattress alternative for a while. Then she got a lead on an exciting bed option, and she shared it with us, saying basically, “I know this couple that you have to meet. They’ve made a bed out of sand!” So we went to meet Michael Garcia and Stephanie Wing-Garcia and their sand mattress. They live just a few minutes from our house, in a big, sunny apartment full of beautiful things–and they sleep on a king sized bed which c...

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092 A Mattress Made of Sand

..., she had a flash of inspiration. That inspiration would heal her back and lead them to start their own company: The Ultimate Earth Bed. Our conversation also ranges over the history of how people used to sleep, from ancient Rome to the patent on the first mattress in 1850, the ecological consequences of conventional mattresses and the connection between the Earth Bed and barefoot running. For those of you who can’t listen, we also posted about th...

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A Week Later

...can come together around common ground. Also, partisan discussions online lead immediately to unproductive spates of bickering and trolling. But this time, it’s different. This time, silence seems the greater crime. This is a hard post to write. I keep ranting, then deleting. Okay. New plan. Let me tell you a story. Last Friday a small group of people from my church, St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, stood outside the Islamic Center of Southern Cal...

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