November 2007
Wild Trees
In the search for the world's tallest trees, a renegade band of nerdy, obsessive tree-finders discovered patches of wilderness in California and Washington that had never been explored. These areas were so rugged, so blocked with fallen timbers, and so useless otherwise, that they very likely have never been visited by humans before. The nerds began finding trees taller than any known, but no one believed them. In order to prove their claims, they invented ways to climb and examine these giants, and to measure them using lasers. Not only were these indeed the tallest trees in the world, but there was an entirely unknown arboreal ecology in these canopies, including other smaller trees that rooted only in the tops of the tallest trees. Eventually a bunch of maverick biologists joined the pursuit, and they lived, slept, and made love in the tops nearly 400 feet above ground. And sometimes they would fall out of the trees. Richard Preston, the author of the heart-thumping bestseller about the Ebola virus (Hot Zone), manages to tell this story of biological discovery as a summer page-turner. Who will die next? Fast-paced, exhilarating, enlightening -- an intense biological thriller.
-- KK
Wild Trees
Richard Preston
2007, 320 pages
$16
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
A small part of the crown of Iluvatar.
*
Lowman used a Magic Marker to write numbers on the leaves of some Australian trees, and then she climbed up into the trees every so often to see how many numbered leaves were still hanging there. "I'm from upstate New York, and I figured maybe six months, and then the leaf would fall off," she said. Nineteen years later, entering middle age, Lowman found leaves with Magic Marker numbers on them that she had written on the leaves as a younger woman. The leaves had remained alive and unchanged for almost two decades. This illustrates the difficulty humans can have in seeing what's happening in a forest canopy. Humans don't live long enough to see many events in trees unfold. Lowman had spent much of her career trying to observe the fall of a leaf.
*
A forest-canopy biologist at the University of California, Berkeley named Todd Dawson installed sensors in the tops of redwoods that grow around Santa Cruz, and in Sonoma and Humboldt counties. He and his colleagues discovered that a redwood that's bathed in fog can take moisture in through its needles and send the water downward into its small branches. Todd Dawson suspects, but so far hasn't been able to prove, that redwoods can also send water from their needles all the way downward into their trunks. In other words, redwoods can reverse the flow of water inside them when it suits their needs. This is one reason why a redwood can grow so tall -- it doesn't have to depend entirely on water that it gathers from the ground and pulls up to its top. It can gather water from the air. Redwoods feed on the sky.
*
Notes from Iluvatar. Two pages from Steve Sillett's climbing notebook, drawn in 1999, showing his developing map of one section of Iluvatar's crown. This is a sketch of an eight-and-a-half-foot-thick-trunk that gives rise to ninety-eight other trunks.
*
It is a slow-moving infection. A piece of Lobaria the size of a child's hand might take ten years to grow to that size. (Lobaria is a comparatively fast grower. Some lichens can take twenty years to become the size of a dime.) It can take years or decades for some species of lichens to spread from one tree to the next. "If a whole mountainside has been cut, it will be a very long time before the Lobaria comes back," Antoine said. "You start to see it after about two hundred years. But you don't see big, juicy, drippy abundances of these lichens for centuries. You only see it now in old-growth Douglas-fir forests that are over five hundred years old."
A stand of Douglas-firs may be three hundred years old, older than the United States of America, but it will still be a young patch of forest, devoid of many species of lichens. A stand of trees in a temperate Pacific Northwest rain forest that began growing at the time of the Magna Carta (1215) will only now be reaching a fullness of biodiversity. It will be loaded with a variety of lichens and mosses that don't occur in younger forests, and it will also contain a much greater variety of animal life, large and small.
*************************
Based on a mention in Wild Trees, I tracked this incredible monograph down. It features scientifically exact pen and ink portraits of about 100 specific giant trees of various species. The locations for each branch were done from laser measurements since there is no way to stand back and see (or photograph) such giants. It's a maniacal labor of love. Each tree is extremely individualistic, very Ent-ish. There's a wonderful story about each Ent.
-- KK
Forest Giants of the Pacific Northwest
Robert Van Pelt
2001, 200 pages
$27
Available from Amazon
Notice the scale of the people (specks) at the base of the trunks.
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Favorite (15)Cosmic Jackpot
Do the primeval laws governing the universe precede the existence of the universe; if so, in what realm do they operate? Or do the laws expand into existence along with the universe itself? If the latter, what determines the rules of the laws' arrival? This big set of questions is usually pushed away from science and left for theologians and philosophers to invent answers for. Cosmologist and astrophysicist Paul Davies reclaims these fundamental topics as suitable for scientific answers. He reports from the frontiers of knowledge where researchers are measuring, quantifying, and theorizing on the nature of universal laws. Davies includes in the range of answers the very weird possibility that we sentient observers may be partly responsible for the fundamental laws of nature. Let that one sink in. This is an incredibly heady, trippy book, done with masterful clarity and sanity. It's probably the "biggest" book I've ever read.
-- KK
Cosmic Jackpot
Paul Davies
2007, 336 pages
$18
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Mutability was [Wheeler's] byword. He liked to quip that "there is no law except the law that there is no law." Adopting the catchy aphorism "law without law" to describe this contrarian position, Wheeler maintained that the laws of physics did not exist a priori but emerged from the chaos of the quantum big bang - coming out of "higgledy-piggledy" was the way he quaintly expressed it - congealing along with the universe that they govern in the aftermath of its shadowy birth. "So far as we can see today," he maintained, "the laws of physics cannot have existed from everlasting to everlasting. They must have come into being at the big bang." Crucially, Wheeler did not suppose that the laws just popped up, ready-made, in their final form, but that they emerged in approximate form and sharpened up over time.
*
Super-turtle! To avoid an infinite regress (the bottomless tower of turtles) one might consider a levitating superturtle, which is self-explaining and self-supporting. Theologians call this "a necessary being," and some have tried to prove that such a being exists. Some scientists have argued for the necessary existence of a unique superunified theory.
*
The novel feature Wheeler introduced via his delayed-choice experiment was the possibility of observers today, and in the future, shaping the nature of physical reality in the past, including the far past when no observers existed. That is indeed a radical idea, for it gives life and mind a type of creative role in physics, making them an indispensable part of the entire cosmological story. Yet life and mind are the products of the universe. So there is a logical as well as a temporal loop here. Conventional science assumes a linear logical sequence: cosmos -> life -> mind. Wheeler suggested closing this chain into a loop: cosmos -> life -> mind -> cosmos. He expressed the essential idea with characteristic economy of prose: "Physics gives rise to observer-participancy; observer-participancy gives rise to information; information gives rise to physics." Thus the universe explains observers, and observers explain the universe. Wheeler thereby rejected the notion of the universe as a machine subject to fixed a priori laws and replaced it with a self-synthesizing world he called "the participatory universe." By postulating a closed explanatory loop, similar to the self-consistency argument of Benioff that I considered in the previous section, Wheeler deftly circumvented the infamous tower-of-turtles problem. There is no need for a levitating super-turtle if the bio-friendly universe explains itself.
*
To understand the high information content of life, we must recognize that it is a product not of the laws of physics alone, but of the laws of physics and the history of the environment together. Life emerged and evolved its immense complexity as the result of a process that took billions of years and required a vast number of information-processing steps. A biological organism therefore encapsulates the products of a complex and convoluted history. To sum it up in a phrase, life as we observe it today is 1 percent physics and 99 percent history.
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The Looming Tower
This book connects the dots. It answers the question of why 9/11 happened. It weaves together the many diverse strands from Arabia, Yemmen, Egypt, Sudan, Afghanistan, Germany and the US that lead to both al-Queda and the bombing of the Twin Towers. You see the final tapestry and say, Aha! The depth of the international research supporting the book is astounding. Every page is full of news. I was stunned both by how much intelligence insiders knew of Bin Laden, and how much the agencies failed to act on their knowledge. The book traces the saga of the Bin Laden family, the trajectory of Osama, who was a hero in Islam long before the Towers, the role of the heretics who influenced him, the fierce persecutions these radicals faced in their home country, and the sad, tragic turf wars and cultural ignorance in the US that blinded us to the looming disaster. This book will make you realize how ignorant we still are. No matter what side of the political fence you are on, it should be required reading before the next election.
-- KK
The Looming Tower
Lawrence Wright
2007, 576 pages
$11
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
Bin Laden's [father's] fortunes began to lift as the American engineers, under pressure from the Saudi government to train and hire more local workers, began giving him projects that were too modest for the major firms. He was quickly recognized as an exacting and honest builder. He was a small, handsome man, with one glass eye -- the result of a blow a teacher had given him in his first days of schooling. Bin Laden never returned to school, and as a result he was illiterate -- "his signature was like that of a kid," one of his sons remembered. He was nonetheless brilliant with figures, which he could effortlessly calculate in his head, and he never forgot a measurement. An American who knew him in the 1950s described him as "dark, friendly, and energetic." Aramco began a program that granted employees a leave for a year in order to try their luck in business. If they failed, they could return to the company with no loss in status. The Mohammed bin Laden Company was one of many enterprises that got its start with Aramco sponsorship.
Saudi Arabia needed roads. Even into the fifties, there was only one well-paved road, from Riyadh to Dhahran. Bin Laden looked at his giant rival, Bechtel, and realized that without equipment he could never compete for the really important contracts. He began acquiring machinery, and within a very brief span of time he was the largest customer of Caterpillar earth-moving equipment in the world. From now on, he would build nearly every important road in the Kingdom.
*
Ayman al-Zawahiri was defendant number 113 of the 302 who were charged with aiding or planning the October 1981 assassination of Anwar al-Sadat. He became spokesperson for the defendants because of his superior English. He is shown here delivering his lecture to the world press in December 1982. Many blame the torture of prisoners in the Egyptian prisons for the savagery of the Islamist movement. "They kicked us, they beat us, they whipped us with electric cables! They shocked us with electricity! And they used the wild dogs!"
*
In 1995 [Osama] Bin Laden began to have second thoughts about his life. He was struggling to keep his businesses afloat and his organization from flying apart. He could no longer afford to be a dilettante, but he was unwilling to cut loose his unprofitable projects and was paralyzed by the unfamiliar predicament of being broke. He was also pining for the familiar. "I am tired," he told one of his followers. "I miss living in Medina. Only God knows how nostalgic I am." Al-Qaeda so far had come to nothing. It was another of his tantalizing enthusiasms that had no leadership and no clear direction. Al-Qaeda's treasurer, Medani al-Tayeb, who had married Osama's niece, had been urging bin Laden to reconcile with the king as a way of rectifying the organization's dire finances. The Saudi government sent several delegations to see him in Khartoum. According to bin Laden, the government offered to return his passport and his money provided that "I say through the media that the king is a good Muslim." He also claimed that the Saudis offered two billion riyals ($533 million) to his family if he abandoned jihad. He was torn between his righteous stance against the king and his sudden need for funds to keep al-Qaeda alive. When he rejected the offer, Tayeb defected, causing panic among the members when he turned up back in Saudi Arabia.
*
Moussaoui was probably intended to be part of a second wave of al-Qaeda attacks that would follow 9/11, most likely on the West Coast. If the agents in Minneapolis had been allowed to thoroughly investigate Moussaoui, they would have made the connection to Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was sending him money. Moussaoui carried a letter of employment from Infocus Tech,which was signed by Yazid Sufaat. That name meant nothing to the FBI, since the CIA kept secret the information about the meeting in Kuala Lumpur, which took place in Sufaat's condo. The bureau failed to put together the warning from its own office in Minneapolis with that of Kenneth Williams in Phoenix. Typically, it withheld the information from Dick Clarke and the White House, so no one had a complete picture.
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Einstein
This superb biography of Einstein is really a biography of his ideas. It mines the newly opened archive of Einstein's prolific correspondence for clues into his theories. We watch his ideas stir in embryonic form out of witty exchanges with his family and other scientists. We hear the evolving defense of his unorthodox approaches, and his lovely explanations to those who don't understand. Einstein turns out to be a wonderful writer -- as is Walter Isaacson, his biographer -- and someone who thought and spoke in pictures. Although I've read explanations of special relativity and unified field theory many times, reading this biography was the first time I really came close to fully understanding them. A scrutiny of an idea's origins is perhaps the best path to its understanding. One thing this vivid biography of concepts makes clear is that Einstein's chief talent was not his genius, but his imagination. "Imagination," Einstein wrote, "is more powerful than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."
-- KK
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Walter Isaacson
2007, 704 pages
$20
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
The group would usually make their way to the Congress hall together, working on ways to refute Einstein's problem. "By dinner-time we could usually prove that his thought experiments did not contradict uncertainty relations," Heisenberg recalled, and Einstein would concede defeat. "But next morning he would bring along to breakfast a new thought experiment, generally more complicated than the previous one." By dinnertime that would be disproved as well. Back and forth they went, each lob from Einstein volleyed back by Bohr, who was able to show how the uncertainty principle, in each instance, did indeed limit the amount of knowable information about a moving electron. "And so it went for several days," said Heisenberg. "In the end, we -- that is, Bohr, Pauli, and I -- knew that we could now be sure of our ground." "Einstein, I'm ashamed of you," Ehrenfest scolded. He was upset that Einstein was displaying the same stubbornness toward quantum mechanics that conservative physicists had once shown toward relativity. "He now behaves toward Bohr exactly as the champions of absolute simultaneity had behaved toward him."
*
In Santa Barbara, 1933. "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving." -- Albert Einstein, in a letter to his son Eduard, February 5, 1930.
*
As with his letter six months earlier, Einstein went on to reveal quite casually a momentous scientific breakthrough, one that would be expressed by the most famous equation in all of science: "One more consequence of the electrodynamics paper has also crossed my mind. Namely, the relativity principle, together with Maxwell's equations, requires that mass be a direct measure of the energy contained in a body. Light carries mass with it. With the case of radium there should be a noticeable reduction of mass. The thought is amusing and seductive; but for all I know, the good Lord might be laughing at the whole matter and might have been leading me up the garden path."
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A Short History of Nearly Everything
Who knew that Bill Bryson would be the ideal guide to the history of the universe? Bryson has a reputation (at least in my family) of being hilariously funny as a best-selling travel writer. But here he has written a refreshingly brilliant introduction to the basics of physics, chemistry, geology, evolution and the rest of the cosmos. I'm not sure how he does it. He takes well-worn topics (atoms, black holes, molecules, DNA), inverts them, and presents entirely new ways of seeing them. And he still manages to be funny. He is not a scientist, but a storyteller. He's at his best when he recounts the feuds between ideas, and the unpredictable, often round-about route they take before they are accepted as "obvious." He delivers perspective, rather than facts. This is the best Science 101 course you'll ever take.
-- KK
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
560 pages, 2004
$12
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
It isn't easy to become a fossil... Only about one bone in a billion, it is thought, becomes fossilized. If that is so, it means that the complete fossil legacy of all the Americans alive today - that's 270 million people with 206 bones each - will only be about 50 bones, one-quarter of a complete skeleton. That's not to say, of course, that any of these bones will ever actually be found. Bearing in mind that they can be buried anywhere within an area of slightly over 9.3 million square kilometers, little of which will ever be turned over, much less examined, it would be something of a miracle if they ever were.
*
We now know that there are a lot of microbes living deep within the Earth... Some scientists now think that there could be as much as 100 trillion tons of bacteria living beneath our feet in what are known as subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems... Thomas Gold of Cornell has estimated that if you took all the bacteria out of the Earth's interior and dumped it on the surface, it would cover the planet to a depth of five feet. If the estimates are correct, there could be more life under the Earth than on top of it.
*
The most striking thing about our atmosphere is that there isn't very much of it. It extends upward for about 120 miles, which might seem reasonably bounteous when viewed from ground level, but if you shrank the Earth to the size of a standard desktop globe it would only be about the thickness of a couple of coats of varnish.
*
"Oh, probably none," said Anderson breezily. "It wouldn't be visible to the naked eye until it warmed up, and that wouldn't happen until it hit the atmosphere, which would be about one second before it hit the Earth. You're talking about something moving many tens of times faster than the fastest bullet. Unless it had been seen by someone with a telescope, and that's by no means a certainty, it would take us completely by surprise."
*
You may not feel outstandingly robust, but if you are an average-sized adult you will contain within your modest frame no less than 7 x 1018 joules of potential energy -- enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point. We're just not very good at taking it out. Even a uranium bomb -the most energetic thing we have produced yet- releases less than 1 percent of the energy it could release if only we were more cunning.
*
Neutrons and protons occupy the atom's nucleus. The nucleus of an atom is tiny -- only one-millionth of a billionth of the full volume of the atom -- but fantastically dense, since it contains virtually all the atom's mass. As Cropper has put it, if an atom were expanded to the size of a cathedral, the nucleus would be only about the size of a fly -- but a fly many times heavier than the cathedral.
*
The distance from the surface of Earth to the center is 3,959 miles, which isn't so very far. It has been calculated that if you sunk a well to the center and dropped a brick into it, it would take only forty-five minutes for it to hit the bottom... Our own attempts to penetrate toward the middle have been modest indeed. One or two South African gold mines reach to a depth of two miles, but most mines on Earth go no more than about a quarter of a mile beneath the surface. If the planet were an apple, we wouldn't yet have broken through the skin.
Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World
CIA paparazzo Trevor Paglen is a thorn in Uncle Sam's side. Known for snapping telephoto candids of CIA planes and Area 51, the artist also gathers "patch intel," which he's collected in this provocative book (main title: "I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me"). The fruit of several Freedom of Information Act requests, Paglen's book proves that classified black opps concoct esoteric team insignias just like other military divisions. The photo-driven work presents 75 de-classified patches with colorful eagles, skulls, swords, dragons, wizards and even aliens (!). Surveying iconography that was never intended for your eyes is both exhilarating and frustrating. Decoding them is often impossible, which only leads back to the obvious: How else are our tax dollars being spent in secret? Unlike grainy, questionable YouTube clips of UFOs, Big Foot and Loch Ness, in this case, seeing guarantees believing.
-- Steven Leckart
I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World
Trevor Paglen
136 pages, 2007
$14
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:
"Triangulum" is reported to designate a variation on the RS6b SENIOR SPEAR sensor system built into some versions of the U-2 spy plane. The Triangulum system allegedly uses twelve antennas along the aircrafts' fuselage and an antenna on each wing.
The Electronic Warfare Directorate is the primary EW test organization at Edwards Air Force Base. Electronic warfare consists of defensive and offensive avionics and includes the so-called "Infowar" revolution in military technologies Commenting on information-warfare, Air Force Chief of Staff John Jumper told Aviation Week and Space Technology that "we're rapidly approaching the time when you can tell an SA-10's [surface-to-air missile system] radar that it's a Maytag washer and put it in the rinse cycle instead of the firing cycle." The first letter of each word in the phrase "Nitwits Rubes and Oafs" spells out the agency responsible for this patch: the NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office. Furthermore, "OAFS" could be an acronym for Onizuka Air Force Station, an Air Force Space Operations base in Sunnyvale, California colloquially known as the Blue Cube. It is unclear what the collection of three white stars and one black star represent, although they may be related to the collection of four triangles from the NRO's "We Own the Night" patch...The phrase "Setec Astronomy" figures prominently in the 1992 film "Sneakers," in which the phrase is an anagram for "Too Many Secrets."
This patch is from the Phillips Laboratory Military Spaceplane Technology (MiST) Program Office at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The original version of the patch sported an "X-Wing" fighter from the Star Wars movies. When lawyers representing George Lucas delivered the unit a cease and desist order, the aircraft on the patch was changed into the shape that appears in this patch.
The letters ATOP depicted on this patch stand for "Advanced Technology Observation Platform," whose first flight was on October 28, 1990. The Latin phrase "Furtim Vigilans" translates as "Vigilance Through Stealth." No further information about this patch or program is known. Officials at the Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base claim that the program depicted "isn't one of ours."
This was the original version of a patch commemorating a flight test series involving a B-2 "Spirit" stealth bomber. The lower case Greek sigma symbol on the test shape's outline signifies the unknown RCS value. The number "509" refers to the 509th Bomb Wing, which operates the United States' stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. The alien is a reference to the 509th's lineage. In 1947, the 509th was based at Roswell, New Mexico, home of the infamous "Roswell incident," which ensued after the 509th's commander, Col. William Blanchard, issued a press release whose headline stated "Roswell Army Airfield Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region." The dog-Latin phrase "Gustasus Similis Pullus" translates as "Tastes Like Chicken." Note the knife and fork. This patch was eventually modified when Air Force officials insisted that the phrase "Classified Flight Test" could not appear on the design. In an updated version of the patch, "Classified Flight Test" has been replaced with the words "To Serve Man," referencing a classic episode of "The Twilight Zone."
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Apex Mechanical Pencil
This mechanical pencil has the same protective, retractable tip as the Vanishing Point, but it's only $6, half the price. I have been using them for about 2 years. The pencil has a good weight to it - not too heavy and not too light . It uses 3 lead fills and is available in .5 or .7mm. There is also a twist mechanism for the eraser, that helps protect it when not in use.
-- Soham Ghosh
Apex Mechanical Pencil
$7
Available from Amazon (.5mm)
Manufactured by Paper Mate
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Loctite Epoxy
I've used this epoxy to attach PVC pipe to wood, wood to wood, plastic to plastic. It works great, but I mainly love the way the applicator is designed. It is basically just two plastic syringes attached side by side. It makes it easy to squirt out equal parts of the two chemicals you mix together to make the epoxy. Then you simply retract the plunger and slip on the end cap and wait until you need it again. No mess, no hassle, and less waste!
-- Joe Lyles
Loctite Epoxy
$3
Available from Amazon
Manufactured by Henkel
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Mini Phone Recorder
For the last seven years, I've used the Mini Recorder Control to document every 'phoner' I've done as a freelance writer. Like the Recorder Control from Radio Shack, it acts as the go-between for a land line headset and any recorder with a 1/8" mic jack. However, this one's about about half the price. Since it's light and compact, mine is always with me in a little pouch stuffed with a notebook, pens and a Griffin iTalk Pro that allows me to record direct to my iPod. Over time, I've upgraded from a desktop dictation machine to a handheld mini-cassette recorder to two different versions of the Griffin. The only item in my "bag of tricks" that hasn't become obsolete or pooped out is the Mini Recorder Control. Interestingly, I found many of my colleagues in journalism school had independently discovered this exact gadget.
-- Steven Leckart
Mini Recorder Control
$16
Available from from Amazon
Also available from Radio Shack
[Recently I've been playing around with a web-based service called RecordMyCalls; you call an 800#, enter your account info and the # you wish to dial, and the call will be recorded and accessible online shortly after; it's $5 a month for 500MB of storage (at $0.20/min. for U.S. calls), but you can also download the file and own it forever; the sound quality is reasonable, so if you need to record in a pinch or from a cell phone or remotely where there's no web access or Skype, this seems like a viable option; I haven't used it enough to write a proper recommendation, but it seems promising; if you have used it OR if you have an even better solution, please let us know. --sl]
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Home Power
A great resource on renewables and other off-grid techniques written by people who've done the work for people who are ready to do the work themselves. Last I heard (probably more than a decade ago now), there were at least 100,000 homes and buildings off the grid in the USA. Home Power is the magazine that shows them how to do it, what works and what doesn't. For those who aren't afraid to pick up a wrench and get dirty, good stuff.
-- George Mokray
I was the publisher of PV Network News and then Solar Electricity Today from '84 to '97, two publications for and about early adaptors, back to the land folks and anyone interested in using renewable energy (RE). I published the last SET in '97, trading it to Richard Perez who has since created the best American magazine on home energy. Home Power has how-to articles, product reviews and a lot of info on and dealers and manufacturers. It has stories on RE and the Electrical Code, electric cars, wind generators, PV, Hydro and pieces written by home owners telling their stories and showing installations and wiring diagrams -- from basic basic to utility interconnect. In '84 we lived in a place with a 12-volt, 200-watt wind generator and 3 or 4 33-watt PV panels. We used surplus phone company batteries to store our electricity, and we had lighting, radio, phone and TV for the rest of our loads. We hardly knew a thing when we started, it was so new. After 27 years of collecting and installing modules, I now have a 500-watt PV system that runs most of the lighting, all entertainment, computers, washer and dryer (dryer is gas) in our 2000sq. ft. home. Our system cost under $8k and I'm guessing we collect about 80kw month. If you're looking for info on remote homes or utility connected and want to get started or enhance the system you may already have, check out Homepower.com or their paper magazine. You can get all their issues on DVD for $95 -- 20 years, 120 issues, 2716 articles. HP's last issue is 128 pages and is offered as a free PDF. You can also look up dealers and installers in your area on their site.
-- Paul Wilkins
1 yr. subscription (six issues)
$25
Available from Home Power
Or $33 from Amazon
120 Issues on DVD
$95
Available from Home Power
Free PDF
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Cox Wexford Caulk Gun
My father sent me this with an admonition to immediately throw away all the metal caulk guns I have, since I will never want to touch them again -- and I have to agree. This one has an integral spike to break the internal cartridge membrane. It's lightweight but won't break (nor will it break anything else) if you drop it. It's as strong as I have ever required, has never jammed or failed in any way, and the orange color is easy to find in the tool cabinet among all the other junk. As a Victorian homeowner, I use it several times a year and have had this one 3-4 years now. If I were to lose it, I would put off a caulking project until a new one arrived in the mail.
-- Michael Barrett
Wexford Caulk Gun
$6
Available from Amazon
Manufactured by COX North America, Inc.
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KABACLIP Contact Lens Case
This simple little carrier hugs a bottle of contact lens solution, so the two are always together and easy to find at the bottom of your pack. In the past, I've relied on rubberbands and plastic baggies, but of course they tend to break and they add an extra packing step. This clip pops conveniently on and off. The colors make it easy to distinguish right from left. And it's reduced a bit more clutter from my dopkit. The price is a tad extravagant, but the case is so effective I'm done using the freebies.
-- Steven Leckart
KABACLIP Contact Lens Case
$8
Available from and manufactured by KABALAB
Previously available from Amazon
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Wi-Fire Range Extender
For the last six months, I've been using this small, directional USB adapter to hit marginal hotspots when parked. I'm traveling full-time now in a big bus/RV, so I've been everywhere and anywhere, and it really does work. One example: I was in a remote Alabama campground and their little access point was perhaps a few hundred feet away. With the internal Wi-Fi adapter in my Thinkpad (it's Mac/PC compatible), no go. With the Wi-Fire aimed carefully I got a solid, workable signal. I just rotate it around until I get the best signal. It does seem highly directional, too: an eighth-turn can make a huge difference and it's much, much stronger than with the internal adapter (the company claims up to 1000ft.). The big advantage, aside from the price, is that it uses a standard USB cable, so it can easily be extended and moved around unlike a Wi-Fi antenna which needs special cabling, connectors and isn't compatible with all Wi-Fi adapters. I keep dreaming up ways to do the ultimate, automatic long range communications antenna on the bus, but until then...
-- Barclay Brown
Wi-Fire Range Extender
$80
Available from and manufactured by hField
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Plan Station Portable Workstation
I use this portable desk as a stationary desk at work and love it. If you need to relocate your workspace for whatever reason, it folds into a large portfolio style case with handles, so it's quite easy to move your 'hub' with you. You have to provide two pieces of plywood, which slip into two pockets to create the rigid surfaces. Installation is a snap: two metal "O" rings on either edge allow for easy hooking on any sturdy screw/nail/hook. The rings are 48" apart so they line up with any standard 16" O.C. wall stud system. I've been using it for a little over a year now. Boy is it sturdy. The case is nylon with nylon bands well-stitched to support all stress points. The ability to adjust the height is key, as I prefer to use a stool rather than a chair at my work. The working distance from the floor to my desk is approximately 36", so it's more like a workbench, except with this desk, there are no legs to deal with.
-- Jai Dixon
Plan Station Portable Workstation
$65
Available from Amazon
Or $70 from Duluth Trading
Manufactured by Finley Products, Inc.
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Vinegar
I recently became a vinegar convert after acquiring this book whose intriguing subtitle says it all: Over 400 Various, Versatile, and Very Good Uses You've Probably Never Thought Of. What's behind the cover fulfilled its title's promise: I am now using vinegar in several of the ways it suggests, primarily (so far) as a spray-bottle cleanser and flavoring agent/foodstuff. While I can't say for sure that all 400 uses will work as promised, I've had success with a number of them. Next up, I plan to leave a gallon of it overnight, with a gallon or two of water, in the bottom of my bathtub the next time it needs a major touch-up. Some other uses: deodorizer (e.g., of pet stains); recipe-helper (in a wide variety of roles); laundry-cleaning-helper; home remedy (e.g., against bug-bites and burns); pet cleaner/medicine; beauty/grooming aid. Compared to its alternatives, vinegar is inexpensive, easy on the environment, and versatile, which cuts down on my household "inventory." The author also wrote a book called Baking Soda, which I'm just about to plunge into.
Here are a few vinegar recommendations I've already used:
- Clean the microwave by boiling a 50/50 mixture of water and vinegar until it steams up. Wipe clean.
- Add vinegar to a hand-pump compressed-air sprayer to kill weeds and grass growing in crevices in a patio and walkways.
- Make any dried bean dish less gassy or stinky by adding 1/4 cup vinegar to the soaking water.
- Make catsup and other condiments last longer when the bottle is almost empty by adding a little vinegar and shaking.
- Spread a cloth soaked in vinegar over a price tag you want to remove and leave overnight.
- Get rid of fruit flies by setting out a small dish of vinegar---it will attract and drown them.
-- Roger Knights
Vinegar
Vicki Lansky
120 pages, 2003
$9
Available from Amazon
Sample recommendations:
Make creamy scrambled eggs: as eggs thicken when scrambling, add a tablespoon of vinegar for every two eggs.
Rub vinegar on the cut end of uncooked ham to prevent mold.
Add a tsp. of vinegar and sugar to correct a too-salty taste (in any recipe).
Pour a dash of white vinegar on a cloth and lay it over a burn, including sunburn.
Try vinegar ice cubes to clean and deodorize a garbage disposal.
Pour a cup of vinegar into the dishwasher and run the empty machine through the whole cycle to get rid of soap buildup and odors.
Use a paste of vinegar and salt to clean tarnished brass, copper, and pewter, or the scorch marks on the bottom of an iron.
Renew sponges, loofahs, dingy white socks, and dish rags by letting them soak overnight in dilute vinegar.
Remove grease and grime from fan blades, oven interiors, tops of refrigerators, etc.
Pour 1 cup vinegar into a sandwich-sized or quart-sized plastic bag and tying over a scummy shower-head for an hour. If that doesn't work, unscrew shower-head and immerse in vinegar and salt, heating if necessary.
Clean toilet bowl rings by removing water from the bowl (you can use the toilet brush as a plunger to remove it), and laying vinegar-soaked paper towels on the ring for an hour or more.
Stretch any commercial window cleaner by combining it with 1/3 water and 1/3 vinegar.
Scrub fireplace bricks with vinegar.
Decrease static or dust accumulation of plastic or vinyl surfaces by wiping them down with vinegar and water.
Use vinegar on mildewed garments that cannot take bleach.
Wash new clothes with 1/2 cup white vinegar to eliminate manufacturing chemicals.
Remove odor and perspiration or deodorant stains by spraying vinegar on underarm or collar areas.
Make nylon hose look smoother and last longer by adding a tablespoon over vinegar to the rinse water.
Get salt stains off shoes with a dilute vinegar wipe.
Stop itching from insect stings or poison ivy by dabbing or spraying with vinegar.
To cut appetite and reduce weight, drink one glass of a mixture of vinegar, honey, and grapefruit juice before meals.
Pour vinegar wherever you don't want ants to congregate.
Add it to the kids' sandbox to discourage cats from employing it. Also, spray vinegar on outdoor surfaces you want a cat to leave alone.
Get rid of rust on spigots, tools, or bolts by soaking them. If necessary, add salt or heat (caution: stinky). Wash thoroughly afterwards and/or neutralize the vinegar with baking soda; then protect with oil or WD-40.
Tighten the cane in a sagging chair by sponging it with a heated solution of 50/50 vinegar and water.
Wash skinned game with a 50/50 vinegar/water solution to reduce the gamey taste.
Add vinegar to a pet's drinking water to discourage fleas and mange.
**
I saw in the blurb today for Vinegar uses, that it can be used as a weed killer -- that's true, but you have to be really careful because if you don't do it right you'll also sterilize the ground around the weeds. Vinegar can nuke all the beneficial biological processes soil. My neighbor found out about this the hard way. The previous owner got tired of weeds so he used vinegar all over the back yard and killed everything off. Nothing would grow. To 'restart' the soil my new neighbor had to work in a couple of cubic yards of compost for a year and a half. What a lesson.
-- Mark
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The Woodbook
The American Woods is the life work of R.B. Hough, who assembled an astounding collection of more than 350 species and varieties of trees beginning in 1888. This updated edition emphasizes the scope and beauty of his work with two pages per tree: on the right, a gorgeous photo of three paper-thin slices taken from various points on the tree (radial, cross and tangential); on the left, a portrait of the tree's uses (i.e. tools, food, shelter), habitat, availability and a physical description in English, French and German. The subtle and striking range of colors, grains and patterns found in the same tree, let alone the same family, is truly remarkable. This is not a front to back read, but one that encourages haphazard flipping over time. Best to start with the introduction, though, which touches upon deforestation, colonialization, immigration, and the logging that decimated the seemingly inexhaustible American woods quite noticeably by the latter 1800s. With context, the book becomes a thick, visually-arresting reminder that consumption and conservation should go hand in hand.
-- Steven Leckart
The Woodbook
Romeyn Beck Hough, 1883-1913, 1938
Taschen 25th Anniversary, 2007
$27
Available from Amazon
Sample Excerpts:
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Calisto Pro Hands-Free Phone System
I've been using an evaluation unit of the recently-released Calisto Pro phone and Bluetooth headset for a few months and absolutely love it. I replaced an old phone in my office and set this system up on my business line; I clip the handset on my belt when I am away from my desk so I don't have to run into my office to pick up from there. It is the details that really matter. The base is compact and elegant, and because the only dock for the headset is in the base unit, you never have to worry about losing the headset. The soft-clip on the phone opens easily and it's placed on the phone upside down, so when a call comes in you can easily glance down and easily read the screen right side up. The handset also has a built-in speakerphone that is just tremendous, both when docked in the base and used remotely. But the headset is so elegantly integrated with the phone (and it has a long voice-tube for a change!) that one hardly needs the speakerphone function. The system can also sync with Outlook and has a bunch of neat extras, like elegant switching among land, VOIP and cellular calls. Though I haven't used them in my office, I have seen these features demo'd. I've yet to replace my cell phone headset with this one, but I really should, as the Calisto Pro headset is much better. However, this would be a terrific product even if it had no headset because of the quality of the DECT-6 protocol, which delivers tremendous sound quality on the handset. Battery life is also very solid, and so is range, though of course the laws of physics still apply and thus it matters where you put the base and what sort of building you are in. Set up is no different from an ordinary cordless phone -- no need to read directions or the like; it is all very self-evident plug-and-play sort of experience. Just plug into the wall jack and plug in the power supply. When a call comes in, picking up the handset is as easy as picking up a traditional phone. All in all, this is the first cordless headset phone I consider good enough for a home office -- and I've been buying cordless headset phones since the mid-80s and have more than I can count moldering away in boxes. Interestingly, Plantronics is the company that built the headset used by Neal Armstrong when he first stepped on the Moon!
-- Paul Saffo
Calisto Pro Hands-Free Phone System
$250
Available from Amazon
Manufactured by Plantronics
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Book Darts
I am a student in a masters program and read numerous texts at the same time. For years I used sticky plastic flags, but they are not reusable. These thin, folding book darts are flush with the book, and unlike the plastic flags, don't get bent or torn out while in my book bag. They also solve the waste problem. With an order of a hundred I am able to mark all of my books with passages that I need to remember for class discussions. Once done with that class, I simply pull them out and then use them for another class.
-- Jerald Harris
Book Darts
$9
(tin of 50, pic above)
Available from Lee Valley
Manufactured by Book Darts
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Green Bull Double Front Ladder
These ladders have steps on both sides, which really helps if you're doing something where someone has to climb up and help you, like hanging fans or light fixtures. It has a higher rating (375 lbs) than most other heavy-duty commercial grade ladders. Its exceptional build quality and strength make it pretty much bullet proof. A friend introduced me to these after his painter had left one for him to repair some fallen gutters at his home three years ago. He loved it and bought one. I saw it, loved it and bought one and have been using it ever since.
-- Velemir Cicin
Green Bull Double Front Ladder
$190
(6')
Available from Western Tool
Manufactured by Green Bull Ladder
[The 2042 model w/375 lbs. rating comes in sizes 3' through 8', and 10',12' -- sl]
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Golaces
Slip-on shoes are incredibly convenient, but of course, they don't always provide much support or padding. These sets of individual elastic bands convert standard lace-ups to slip-ons. Each band has triangular-shaped anchors to keep them from slipping out of the eyelets. The bands can be tricky to squeeze through, but once they're in, they stay put in my experience. They're available in three sizes (small - large, depending on the desired fit) and a variety of colors, including fun neons (!) but also white and black if your step doesn't need the added flash. It's really a wonder no one thought to invent these sooner. After a friend gave me a set, I salvaged a pair of running shoes from the back of my closet. Call me lazy, but because I can easily kick 'em off and slip 'em on, they're the only shoes I wear on the weekend.
-- Steven Leckart
Golaces
$10
Previously available from Jibbitz*
Manufactured by Golaces*
*NOTE: Golaces founder Brian Witlin says these already-nifty elastic laces are being re-tooled and will once again be available in the spring of 2009. We'll be checking out and reporting back on the new Golaces then, so stay tuned... -- SL
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StudyPerfect
StudyPerfect is a flashcard program that's easy to use and easy on the eyes. It will do all the normal tasks flashcard programs do (let you create and print cards, name the cards, study on the computer, etc.). But the program also lets you record images and sound on one card. If you are an auditory learner or learning a foreign language (I am and I recently brushed up on Spanish), then having the pronunciation with the text is extremely helpful. You can also place images and text on the same card, and it has a drag-and-drop numbering system, which is really helpful for labeling.
Because you can print, you get all the positives of doing it by hand (i.e. portability), but of course you also get all the positives of going digital: you can create cards very quickly (typing speed); you can hide cards, shuffle cards, combine and separate decks with the click of a button; you won't ever lose the cards; you can add sound and symbols to the cards (again, great for languages); you don't need glue to add images, diagrams or tables; you can quickly flip between cards (again, the click of a button); and you can share a deck of cards with your friends and still keep your own.
I tried a lot of card programs, including MemorizeIt, Flash Reader, Virtual FlashCards, and a few others. I've been using StudyPerfect almost a year now and this is the one I'm sticking with. I am in law school, so I try to create a few cards every weekend, but I'll use the program for hours every day during a "dead week." Compared to the other programs, the interface is simple, pretty and obviously professionally done. The buttons are large, and the images can even be zoomed so that you can have really big cards to study. And unlike MemoryLifter, which was actually ok in some respects, StudyPerfect isn't too complex for my daughter's attention span. She has been using it for most of her 8th grade classes (history, science, math, and English) -- she probably uses the program about twice a month, but prints the cards and uses them every week.
When I emailed them to praise the product, I received a very prompt reply thanking me for my interest and asking if there were other features I would be interested in seeing in the future. I suggested an export to MP3 so I can put cards on my iPod and listen to them while I work out, and the support guy said it was already on their list. I also found out there are several schools that buy StudyPerfect for all their students. The only downside is that currently it's only available for PCs.
-- Brandon Beam
StudyPerfect
$25
Available from LuminareSoft
Or download a free trial
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Rosetta Stone Language Learning
Metal Weather-Stripping
Unlike the plastic, foam or rubber weather-stripping one mostly finds at the big box stores, metal weather-stripping lasts for decades and truly keeps out the wind and weather. I live in NJ about 5 miles from the ocean and we encounter typical northeastern freezing-to-steamy yearly variations. Very nearly every old (80-100 years) house I know of in my town has some of this installed on the doors or windows (that haven't been ripped out since in a hasty renovation). I recommend this specifically for retrofitting and sealing old homes' doors & windows to keep out drafts & winds. Even an old drafty window can keep the rain & snow out, but the air infiltration is tougher to seal against. These weather strips do this every bit as well as newer plastic strips, but last longer and add the advantage of smoothing out the travel of the sash as compared to the wood-wood sliding surfaces of old sash windows. I've seen metal weather-stripping described as "carpenter's weather strip" because it does require someone with some skills & tools to install, but an investment in a day's effort and a few dollars' worth of materials has allowed me to refit & tune up 100 year-old sash windows, inswinging casement attic windows, and doors that have clearly already outlasted those with new, more expensive vinyl stuff. I obtain mine straight from a manufacturer in Mt. Vernon, NY (est. in 1898!). They offer a vast selection in zinc, bronze and brass for all types of doors and windows. I usually choose zinc because it's less expensive and the old stuff I see around town is zinc also, so I figure it must have lasted some time already.
-- Michael Barrett
Metal Weather-Stripping
$50 minimum order
Free catalogue available from Accurate Metal Strip Co. Inc.
Or call (800) 536-6043
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