review, books

Bulletproof Privacy

Today I finished reading Boston T. Party’s Bulletproof Privacy. The book attempts to teach one how to live off the radar, but within Civilization. It covers topics such as building identities, anonymous addresses, bugging out, and the like. Published in 1997, much of the information is dated (I skipped the part on airplane travel). Other parts are common sense, but the book does provide a few gems of information. I’d recommend giving it a skim if you’re considering becoming invisible (or would just like the ability to do so).

review, books

Gone to Croatan

Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture is an alternative American history. It is a collection of essays, poems, and art, documenting America’s lost drop-outs, rebels, and other undesirables. The majority deal with the revolutionary period.

The book has its ups and downs. Some pieces are crafted in such a way that I only skimmed through them, others enthralled me. I recommend it for fans of Hakim Bey.

Land Pirates

These men cannot live in regular society. They are too idle, too talkative, too passionate, too prodigal & too shiftless to acquire either property or character. Finding all their efforts vain, they become at length discouraged and then under the pressure of poverty, the fear of a gaol and consciousness of public contempt, leave their native places, and betake themselves to the wilderness.

-Timothy Dwight

American Apparel No More

According to Clamor, American Apparel has prevented their workers attempts to unionize and the company’s founder has had three different sexual harassment charges filed against him by workers. (Article preview here) So, there’ll be no more purchasing of their products by me. I recommend No Sweat.

Sadly, this also means I can’t buy from Proletarian Threads anymore (they print on American Apparel shirts).

quote

The Earthly Topology of Time

I find myself standing in the midst of an eternity, a vast and inexhaustible present. The whole world rests within itself -- the trees at the field's edge, the hum of crickets in the grass, cirrocumulus clouds rippling like waves across the sky, from horizon to horizon. In the distance I notice the curving dirt road and my rusty car parked at its edge -- these, too, seem to have their place in this open moment of vision, this eternal present. And smells -- the air is rich with faint whiffs from the forest, the heather, the soil underfoot -- so many messages mingling between different elements in the encircling land. ... Things are different in this world without "the past" and "the future," my body quivering in this space like an animal. I know well that, in some time out of this time, I must return to my house and my books. But here, too, is home. For my body is at home, in this open present, with its mind. And this is no mere illusion, no hallucination, this eternity -- there is something too persistent, too stable, too unshakable about this experience for it to be merely a mirage...
  • David Abram

Drop the bomb? Eat seaweed

The following is an excerpt from Susun Weed’s Healing Wise. It may come in handy, in a world where the government seems to be having nukes on their mind.

Workers at Swedish nuclear power plants eat seaweed to reduce and eliminate their absorption of strontium 90, a radioactive element. Research at McGill University finds that alginic acid, one of the main components of seaweed, binds with radioactive strontium to form strontium alginate, an insoluble compound, which is rapidly eliminated from the gastro-intestinal tract, reducing the absorption of strontium 90 by fifty to ninety percent. Strontium 90, released in nuclear accidents as well as in the running of nuclear power plants, has a high affinity for calcium. When released into the air, it is easily concentrated in calcium-rich foods such as milk (including mother's milk) and leafy greens. Eat these contaminated foodstuff and the radioactivity, now combined with calcium, enters the bone marrow where it can damage delicate immune and blood cells. Consistently eating seaweed helps eliminate any radioactive particles already absorbed, repairs damage to the bone marrow, and prevents further absorption of strontium 90. Fucoidan and algin, components of brown seaweeds, diminish blood levels of lead in animal studies. Seaweeds have been shown to remove mercury, cadmium, lead, barium, tin and other heavy metals from tissue, according to the Marine Technology Society.
review, books

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

Today I finished reading The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, a book about the author’s time with a flock of wild parrots in San Francisco. The book has its ups and downs, becoming boring at times with the attention payed to the parrots’ every action, but, overall, it’s a good read.

Bug Juice

MutantFest served as my testing ground for Good Natured Earthling’s bug spray, made by my soap teacher. I was surprised how well it worked. During my whole time in the Forest, I was bit only once, and that was before I broke out the bug juice in the evening.

I highly recommend picking up a bottle.