The kids are all bikin’

...os Angeles, with the majority of bike commuters being poor folks of color, making our city more bikable is a civil rights issue. For an overview of the bike to work day festivities (which ironically, since they take place in the middle of a weekday, tend to involve mostly the self-employed or unemployed) read Damien Newton’s post on the excellent Streetsblog LA. Elsewhere the fabulous Enci, our actor/cyclist comrade, had another run-in with a part...

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What the Internet Will Look Like After the Zombie Apocalypse

...of off the shelf wireless routers overlaps with amateur radio frequencies making it legal for Hams to boost the range of these devices. That and the fact that several models of ubiquitous Linksys routers are cheap and easy to hack. Photo: Texas Ham Radio All you do is take your Linksys router, screw in a better antenna (note the one above made with a tin can), load some open source software on to it, scatter them around town and you’ve got a wire...

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How to Deal with Extremely Root Bound Plants

...r pseudo-pot of themselves. In this case, you have to be ruthless. Get yourself a sharp knife and make long vertical cuts down the sides of the root ball–how many depends on the size of plant, and what you think is best, but I find I usually make 3 to 5 cuts. These cuts do violence to the roots, but will allow new root growth at the cut sites, giving the plant a chance to spread its roots out in your garden’s soil, instead of trying to live within...

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Lost from the cradle of connection: the high price of driving

...They are magical talismans. They represent us: our souls, our freedom and self-determination. I don’t know if we can escape this kind of blindness. I speak for myself. I drive. I live in a car-centric city. I know better. And still I drive. But I do wonder why, and I wonder what it is doing to our souls. The road is an ugly place and it makes for ugly people. I was on the freeway today, and as usual had a few scary moments and did my obligatory b...

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Block Party Weekend

...polluted, and abused city. The block party featured ecologically savvy and self-reliant touches such as solar ovens to cook the vegetarian buffet and photovoltaic panels to power the amplifiers of the bands entertaining the crowds on Bimini Street. The fine folks at the Bicycle Kitchen had a repair stand to fix people’s rides, while at the other end of the block the smell of spray paint filled the air as kids got to go nuts making art on some old...

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