As Bob Costas once said about another grand spectacle (the opening ceremonies of the Los Angeles Olympics), “sometimes words add nothing.”

Imagine a unicorn appearing at your door, in the flesh, and asking to hang around a while.   That would be pretty weird, because you always thought unicorns were mythical creatures like succubi or centaurs.  But it would be a hell of a lot weirder if your new one-horned lodger turned out to be mild-mannered, always helpful, impressively strong when the occasion demanded, and a total natural with the kids.  (Of course Teddy can come, sweetie. :)

[photo by Patrick Barber, aka hen power — thanks!]

That’s the way I feel about my family’s new Xtracycle setup.  It’s a bicycle I never thought existed in American reality: a bike that is actually a useful and flexible form of family transportation. One that can carry a kid and six bags of groceries without creaking, tipping over, or making the steering go googoo.   It eliminates the need for dozens of car trips each week — and it’s fun enough it eliminates the desire for those trips too.

The Xtracycle is that rare thing in today’s world: a green product that could actually make a difference.  It could allow thousands of two-car families to switch to one car, and one-car families to switch to zero cars, and have more fun than they did before.  Right now my family doesn’t own any cars.  We have an Xtracycle, several personal bicycles, and a subscription to a carsharing service.  It’s working well and it’s really cheap.  Plus kids love Xtracycles.

[photo by carfreedays under Creative Commons]

Initially I was cynical about the potential of the Xtracycle to really change things.  …more

[photo by flickr user amyrod]

Point your loudspeakers out the window and listen to this while you ‘cue: JFK reads the Declaration of Independence.  [download may take a few minutes]

Or here’s the text.

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, …more

“A strange new shadow land has grown up in America. It’s a world of cinderblock villas and plywood hallways, garish under halogen security bulbs. It clings to the underside of Western towns like Roman catacombs, pushes up funereal fault blocks in urban centers, and festoons suburban freeways with palaces styled after castles and forts…”

Read more about self-storage here. Nice photo by flickr user fabbio.

One little note: the video segment is very pretty and smooth, but might give the impression that making one of these systems is pretty much throwing some stuff in a jar. It’s not. Yes, the pond scum is important, but too much of it will be a very bad thing. So: read the full recipe at this link.

Thanks for being you, Malingering.

Somehow, kalevkevad’s photo titled “Garbage Disaster” seems apropos.

It’s a gentle preview of what might happen if Ralph Nader’s presidential bid manages to splinter off a piece of the progressive vote this year. Yes, I groaningly agree, none of the major candidates in the current election are sworn enemies of corporate capitalism. And you have to give the man extreme props for his heroism as a consumer advocate. But the concept that there is no difference between the two major parties, especially on environmental policies, is preposterous.

Go home to your honors and your achievements and a well-deserved beer, Ralph. I’ll even send you a sweet, sweet six to get the party started. We can watch the election returns together, and hold hands, and cry, and at the end of the night, smile with just a smidgeon of hope.

I must get legit press credentials so I can attend stellar events like this one: Bono and Al Gore together on the same stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Besides fueling slippery-fingered fantasies worldwide (how’d you like to get down with both of them in a Swiss hotel room? now that’s what I’m talkin’ about!), Al Gore got frank, and I’d say, helpful. He said, quote:

“I think it is really important from a climate change point of view to move away from the idea that personal actions from each of us represents the solution to this crisis.”

By personal actions, he’s talking about changing light bulbs and other bits of personal lifestyle, as promoted by treehugger and other relentlessly positive promoters of green consumerism.

“These are important… but in addition to changing the light bulbs it is important to change the laws,” Gore said.

Thank you Al. Don’t forget to vote!

Here come the objections: Unpermittable. Uninsurable. Illegal. Or my favorite: impossible!

[Ladder image borrowed from Monolithic.com via materialicious.]

People striving to make environmentally sensitive housing often struggle against building codes and planning officials that tell them their environmentally positive design feature simply “can’t be done.” In the case of small or tiny houses — which can be greener than a solar mcmansion just by being reasonably sized — one of the biggest challenges can come with stairways, since code stairways take up so much floor area and volume.

There are alternatives, of course, and here I’ll tell you about the one we used in my tiny house project: …more

Last year MAKE magazine published a tutorial I wrote about how to make a closed ecological system in a sealed bottle. It was a significant improvement on the earlier attempts I had made. My new system could reliably sustain Amano shrimp for 3 months or more, and snails indefinitely.

“The TSSM (Tabletop Shrimp Support Module) is a fun demonstration of the ecological cycles that keep us all alive, and an enticement to muse on everything from Godhood to space colonization,” I wrote in the teaser, and hey, I believe that more than ever now. Everybody should do this project.

Now MAKE’s a pricey mag — well worth it of course — but nonetheless it was nice to see the editors release my article to the public as a free PDF. In the months since the MAKE piece I’ve …more

VOTE. And if I can’t can’t convince you, how about flickr artiste magandafille?

Somehow I feel less cynical when I look at this photo.

Generally when it comes to greening up our lives, we tend to overestimate the impact of our sentiments, and …more