Daily Life Section

Richie Sowa's Ecologically Irresponsible Spiral Island

Submitted by cactii on February 9, 2010 - 10:01am

Richie Sowa's Spiral Island is a floating island near the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. It's an island made of garbage. Most of the garbage that's used in the construction of the island consists of capped plastic bottles that are put into bags made of netting and then strapped together to form a floating structure.

My vision of green is a little different than Richie Sowa's vision. I would never consider bringing 200,000 plastic bottles together so that I could throw them into the ocean and try to live on them. Read the full article »

The Ingenuity of Man - Overcoming the Challenges of Nature

Submitted by cactii on February 8, 2010 - 10:33am
Plastic Covered Plantation

Human beings are amazing creatures. We're set apart from all the rest of the animal kingdom by our ability to reason and solve problems.

The one thing that amazes me the most about human beings is our ability to work with mother nature. We're able to deal with the challenges she offers up. We're able to overcome these challenges, and use the fruits of our ability to change things for our own benefit.

Man is changing things all the time, it happens all around us in many forms, a lot of times we're not even paying attention enough to realize the feats we've accomplished. Read the full article »

How To Wreck the Sun Too

Submitted by cactii on January 18, 2010 - 8:15am
Space Cannon for Launching Supplies into Space

An article was recently published on Popular Science about a space cannon that could be used to launch supplies into outer space.

The space cannon is important because it has the potential to be able to reduce current space launch costs of about $5,000 per pound down to just $250 per pound.

While there's no mention of the device being used to launch nuclear waste as a projectile into the sun in the original article, the article also appears on Slashdot and Gizmodo where discussions about launching nuclear waste into the sun is well underway. Read the full article »

At the Mercy of Mother Nature – A Reason to Go Green

Submitted by cactii on January 16, 2010 - 9:52am

Recently, Haiti was devastated by an act of mother nature. An earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter Scale quickly and easily destroyed buildings, roadways and the infrastructure that took Haitians many years to build. Every witness to events like the earthquake in Haiti should think about how powerful mother nature is and how it's in everyone's best interest to try and work with her instead of work against her. Read the full article »

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Submitted by cactii on December 25, 2009 - 9:51am

Super short post today!

I just wanted to wish everybody a Merry Christmas. I hope that you're in the company of all those that you care for, that you share some old memories and have some new ones to share in the future.

Merry Christmas!

No Binding Deal Out of Copenhagen

Submitted by cactii on December 22, 2009 - 9:41am

The Copenhagen Climate Change meeting has come and gone and 192 nations couldn't come up with any agreement to set in stone that they'd be bound to adhere to by international law.

While I don't like that no agreement came out of the talks, I can understand both China's and the USA's positions on these matters.

When there is any agreement between world nations there needs to be some sort of verification that everybody is playing fair. Independent bodies would have to be able to go into a participating country and verify that their carbon emissions are actually what they say they are. Read the full article »

When the Grass Was a Little Greener

Submitted by cactii on December 21, 2009 - 9:27am

I talk to everybody about my green living passion, my desires to be more self-sufficient and my hope that mankind will rob a little less from what mother nature has to offer. I've realized that there's a lot more to the green movement than just having the desire to be less of an impact on the earth's resources.

Through a few conversations with a couple of important people I know, I started thinking about the history that we've went through to get to where we are.

I'm going to start with pieces of some good conversations that I had with an old friend of mine named Martial. I'm 36 years old and Martial is in his mid 70's, so he sees the whole world a little differently than I do. Read the full article »

I'm Going to Get Stung for Doing This to the Bees!

Submitted by cactii on December 17, 2009 - 3:39pm
Feral Bees Living in Fallen Log

I have a friend who found a feral beehive near my property. Since I keep bees I was interested in having a look at them to see if I could utilize them in any way.

Before I had a look at these bees I started asking some questions about what can be done with feral bees. One suggestion was to try and capture any swarms that the hive produces. When bees swarm about half of the hive with the queen leave the existing hive and look for another location to live. Capturing them means that I'd put out an attractive place for them to move into somewhere where it would be easy for them to find and hope that they decide on their own to move into it. Read the full article »

The (Dangerous) Flight of the Honey Bee - Viewer Discretion Advised

Submitted by cactii on December 15, 2009 - 3:21pm
Honey Bee Impaled on Spine

Sometimes you see things in nature that you could not ever imagine being possible. Today was a day that I was again surprised with the things that go on under our noses just outside our regular view.

I've never though that the nature was a dangerous place for something like an insect. I know that they have predators that go after and eat them but I never pictured the environment itself as being threatening to any insect. Read the full article »

My Palo Fierro Stump - Who Would Do That?

Submitted by cactii on December 14, 2009 - 8:03am

I have this Palo Fierro (Ironwood Tree) on my property. It looked more like a bush when I first bought my piece of land but on closer inspection I realized that it was actually a very old Ironwood Tree that had been cut down and what I was seeing was the new growth from the old stump.

The stump must be almost 20 inches in diameter which means, since it's a slow growing tree, that it likely had more than 30 years of growth before someone cut it down.

My wife and I spent some time cutting out the sucker branches from the stump so that it would start to grow like a tree again. We took out the weak branches, the branches that crossed others and those that didn't look quite right. It was painful for both us and the tree because Ironwoods have a lot of little thorns all over their branches. Read the full article »