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20 November 2009
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On roadkill, seasonal foraging, and getting by with a little help from my tribe
by Rebecca Lerner   
ImageThis time, I will last all seven days. Because of the lessons I learned from my wild food experiment in May about the importance of storing wild food as it becomes available, I have a pantry stocked with edibles that are no longer in season, such as chanterelle mushrooms, stinging nettles and acorns.
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Can a Portland Woman Survive On Wild Food for Thanksgiving Week?
by Culture Change   
News release

Survival Challenge:
Can a Portland, Ore. Woman Live Off Wild Food for Thanksgiving Week In the City?

Most people head to the supermarket to prepare for Thanksgiving dinner, but urban forager Rebecca Lerner is trying an entirely different approach: the sidewalk! From Friday Nov. 20 through Thanksgiving dinner on Nov. 26, Lerner will attempt to survive exclusively on wild food she gathers from sidewalks, parks, wilderness areas and yards in the city of Portland, Ore.

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Laborers Before Sunrise
by Peter Goodchild   
In "developing" countries, not to mention a few that are never to be developed, the average laborer lives in a milieu of poverty, overcrowding, misery, and injustice. Here in Oman on the weekends I get up before sunrise, avoiding the heat, to go for long walks, encountering laborers from the Indian subcontinent on their way to work. Most of them are heading toward construction sites. At houses and similar buildings, that means working entirely without machinery, even when the temperature stays in the mid-fifties Celsius for days.
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The Oceans are Coming - Part II: Living on the Land
by Keith Farnish and Dmitry Orlov   
ImageAre you still talking about Cyclone Nargis? Have you ever heard of Cyclone Nargis? Here’s a reminder: on 1 May 2008 a weakening low-pressure system suddenly picked up energy as it approached Burma from the Bay of Bengal. By the second day of this rapid strengthening, Cyclone Nargis was blowing in excess of 135 MPH and made landfall on the low-lying southern coast of Burma armed with vast reserves of cyclonic energy, a storm surge beneath, and constant heavy rain from above.
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Is There a Technology Resistance?
by Peter Crabb   
The driving force behind the anthropogenic destruction of Planet Earth is locked inside our skulls. Neuroscientists are just beginning to identify the neural networks of the Technological Mind, but one thing is certain: the irresistible impulse to use tools is the product of natural selection over the last 1.5 million years, and so it is probably more deeply ingrained than even our impulse to use language.
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Stop a Highway Project Through the Ancient Redwoods
by Center for Biological Diversity   
ImageSign the Center for Biological Diversity's Petition to save Richardson Grove!

Ask any visitor to California's North Coast who has driven the Redwood Highway north from San Francisco, and they'll be able to tell you exactly where they passed through the fabled "Redwood Curtain."

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After the Age of Exuberance
by Peter Goodchild   
Is there a correlation between the human psyche ― mood, world view ― and material resources? Or, more specifically, is there a correlation between the psyche and a relative change in resources, i.e. within one culture, from an earlier decade or century to a later one? Is there a sort of psychological history that parallels the material one? And can we see that correlation in these early years of the 21st century?
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Gasoline Price Causing Big-Vehicle Sales
by Jan Lundberg, oil-industry analyst   
The retail price of gasoline in the U.S. is extremely low, not just compared to the summer of 2008. Subsidies both direct and hidden create a true cost at least a few times higher than the visible price. The actual cost is paid largely through income taxes (such as for wars in the Middle East and domestic infrastructure), in the purchase of goods and services associated with "free" parking, and even medical care for car/fuel related mortality and morbidity. When the average gasoline price is $2.66 a gallon, according to news reports on the most recent Lundberg Survey, the message to the consumer is "Buy that big vehicle."
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Day of the Dead
by Albert Bates   
Image"The great advantage we have, our best chance for avoiding the fate of past societies, is that we know about those past societies. We can see how and why they went wrong. Homo sapiens has the information to know itself for what it is: an Ice Age hunter only half-evolved towards intelligence; clever but seldom wise.
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Growing Your Own Grains
by Peter Goodchild   
Most of what are called grains are members of the grass family, which has the scientific name of Gramineae or Poaceae. Grains are the most important plants in human diet, contributing most of the carbohydrates as well as a certain amount of protein, vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Generally speaking, grains are quite undemanding in terms of soil or weather.
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Anthropoclastic Climate Change
by Dmitry Orlov   
When I published the previous article about the ever-more-dire forecasts of ocean level rise, little did I know that I was blundering into the midst of a "climate change debate." But then many readers reacted to this article by making comments to the effect that "climate change is a hoax" or that I am "just like Al Gore." Since that article reviews and attempts to interpret of some of the most authoritative, conservative and consensus-based scientific reports available, it should not have given rise to any controversy at all.
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The End Of Electricity
by Peter Goodchild   
ImageThere seems to be a consensus that the depletion of fossil fuels will follow a fairly impressive slope. What may need to be looked at more closely, however, is not the "when" but the "what." Looking at the temporary shortages of the 1970s may give us the impression that the most serious consequence will be lineups at the pump. Fossil-fuel decline, however, will also mean the end of electricity, a far more serious matter.
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