magicbean

Recent Actions

• Commented on Mark Dery on 2012 bunkum
  morgan, that's the classic 2012 backpedal..."Um, it was just an IDEA you guys, like duh, I totally didn't mean it for real, i just wanted to spike the conversation!" Be smarter than that. While there's a great deal to be...
• Commented on Mark Dery on 2012 bunkum
  I tried to point out to a whole lot of 2012ers (with no success, of course) that one's behavior would change pretty drastically if one really and truly for realz believed the world was going to end. All of them...
• Commented on Farms as skyscrapers
  It's not a failure of imagination to say this is a crackpot idea, it's a success of the obvious. Technology is amazing and will get us the solution, but this ain't it: the flaws in the idea indicate very little...
• Commented on Farms as skyscrapers
  Another thing that cracks me up about the mock-up image is the prominent shadows cast about the building. As if fruit trees didn't require full sun to produce fruit. Maybe there's a GMO apple that can be grown in a...
• Commented on Farms as skyscrapers
  "an enclosed, controlled environment, techniques such as aeroponics can be used to vastly increase production by up to 50 times" Cite? Or are we playing crazy-make-em-ups? As an organic farmer, I've worked with a few university extension schools who know...
• Commented on Farms as skyscrapers
  I read the "advantages" of vertical farming on the website, and started on the essays, which describe the "advantages" in some greater detail. Most of them are...well...to be honest...kind of...crap. Minimally, the claims are completely unsubstantiated, and sound like they...
• Commented on The woman who can't stop orgasming
  sleze and markm, sounds like you need to expand your definition of "normal, healthy realtionship" beyond eighth grade and get your jimmy unconfused with the meaning of "relationship". (cue the rest of the stoopid sexist comments....)...
• Commented on Crazy organic bread-slicer sign for crazy organic bread eaters
  #86, can I suggest you try asking me what I think and what my experience is rather than telling me what your (incorrect) assumptions about me are...you get more accurate information that way....
• Commented on Crazy organic bread-slicer sign for crazy organic bread eaters
  #45, oh my goodness, i had no idea that what I do every day DOESN'T EXIST! Thanks, I'm so relieved, now I know I don't have to go to work tomorrow at my 10 years pesticide-free farm cause it's not...
• Commented on Brown fat makes you thin
  Now here's an interesting take on obesity. What if it really didn't matter? http://kateharding.net/but-dont-you-realize-fat-is-unhealthy/...
• Commented on Autism as an academic advantage
  bklynchris - I think you are taking what I'm saying a little too personally, and are making a number of incorrect assumption about what I do and what I mean. So please let me clarify. I'm not a school teacher,...
• Commented on Autism as an academic advantage
  I've worked with an unusual number of spectrum kids and teens, and although anecdotal, my experience tells me that given the wide range of talents and interests in spectrum kids, you can't really paint that broad a stroke and say...
• Commented on Kids lose their summer break due to impenetrable bureaucratic mess
  @58 Yes...it's the difference between "knowing about something" and "knowing something". To "know something" you have to get your butt out of the classroom seat and experience it, not just read the text and pass the test. It's the difference...
• Commented on Shop Class as Soulcraft
  I got into farming after years as a DBA and unix admin. I would never, ever go back to the indoors and typing all day. There is very much still a stigma attached to working with one's hands. For years...
• Commented on Is Crohn's disease on the rise because we've eliminated hookworm infections?
  $2300? Jee$u$, you could spend that much spending a month in any underdeveloped country and get hookworm for *free* while you're having a nice vacation to boot. "Parasite Rex" by Carl Zimmer has a some fabulous parasite tales, including some...
• Commented on Trailer for The Garden, opens in theaters April 24, 2009
  #13 Big industrial jobs utterly fail to create the sense of self-reliance and community power that community farms and gardens inherently build. A warehouse and distribution center is what the landowner wants to create on that spot? Great. Crappy, thoughtless...
• Commented on What Poison Ivy Has Been Up To While You Weren't Paying Attention
  As much as I love Euell Gibbons, jewelweed actually has quite a different habitat than poison ivy...it needs wet roots and tends towards the shady areas, poison ivy does not. (random fact about jewelweed: you can eat the seeds that...
• Commented on What Poison Ivy Has Been Up To While You Weren't Paying Attention
  I've fought many battles with poison ivy, won some...lost others badly. I've tried everything from ripping it out to covering it with plastic for 2 years. Salt. Vinegar. Bulldozing it and burying it under 6 feet of compost seems to...
• Favorited Question Box: the Internet for remote places, no literacy or keyboards required on Boing Boing
• Favorited Question Box: the Internet for remote places, no literacy or keyboards required on Boing Boing
• Favorited Uncle Dirty photo essay on Boing Boing
• Commented on Ayahuasca experience
  Agreed wholeheartedly. Sharing it with a healthy spoonful of "don't act like a dope" will make it even harder to stamp it out....
• Commented on Ayahuasca experience
  I see what you mean, so let me clarify what I mean...It's certainly unusual to do it alone, and given how powerfully obliterating my own experiences have been, I salute you for it. I personally would not do ayahuasca alone....
• Commented on Ayahuasca experience
  The hurling is the best thing you've ever felt :) because you're thinking "I NEVER want to do this again. Time to let it go for good." I think ayahuasca is already hip, so thank god it's hard to find...
• Commented on Cult of Done Manifesto: a name for my disease
  7. Once you're done you can throw it away. Isn't that how we ended up with this problem of a "throw away" culture and huge piles of waste everywhere?...
• Commented on TED2009: Louise Fresco
  #41 and #42 That's a bit misleading. Whole Foods (who openly admits to being about image rather than true organic culture) may be losing customers, but organic market farmers and CSAs are earning money hand over fist. More and more...
• Commented on Give the people what they want!
  @#33 Yes, it's a huge groundswell, you can read all about what sustainable food policy folks have tracked on COMFOOD, the Grist, and other food policy blogs. Completely and utterly ignored....
• Commented on Give the people what they want!
  I am really, really skeptical that the Obama administration is reading and taking a real cue from this voice of the people. For example, one of the top proposals is about changing the face of agriculture. Yet Obama just nominated...
• Commented on Wingsuit base jumpers are human flying squirrels -- video
  in the film "Twenty Second of Joy" (about one of the few female base jumpers) the filmmaker says that lifespan of a base jumper is....6 years. Excellent film. Trailer is on youtube....
• Commented on Joel Stein: "Nut allergies -- a Yuppie invention"
  @#197 I've been in almost continual allergic reaction to something or other, with constant eye, ear, nose and throat infections. Now this is part of the problem Joel Stein is talking about, documented right in front of our reading little...