The Wampus Cat » environment

A More Efficient Refrigerator

The Wampus Cat — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:58:53 +0000

I have been between jobs for coming up on two months now and I have taken advantage of this free time and the beautiful Vermont autumn by walking around a lot. Hiking is a good way for me to come up with fifteen great ideas an hour, and I have been focusing lately on houses. I have always had an interest in architecture and I am looking forward to building my own remotely situated house somewhere in the next few years. My friend and former employer JS built himself a small cabin out in the woods in upstate New York that he lived in while building a house for his family, I take that as inspiration for this whole business.

The current plan is wide and ever changing, but the basic idea is to be really, really far away from other people, get a shipping container or two from the Port of Boston (word on the street is they’re going for about four grand plus transit costs), and set up shop in those while I build the dream house. The main conceit: seasonal walls. Indoor space becomes outdoor space in the summer time. The black fly aspect hasn’t been thought through yet.

I also get to think about all the times in my years of looking I’ve come across individuals and families inventing tremendous solutions for heating, cooling and powering their homes and businesses efficiently and off the grid. I am not sure how I came across this particular site, but Dr. Tom Chalko of Australia has come up with some very, very good ways to build a house off the grid at maximum efficiency for not very much money. One of these great ideas is the conversion of a chest freezer (as pictured above) into a refrigerator. It’s considerably more efficient than a stand-up refrigerator, which is good for people off the grid and people just looking to replace their aging, inefficient refrigerator. The energy savings are so remarkable it will pay for itself after a few years, if you still pay for electricity, that is.

Other great, inexpensive ideas Tom has implemented include straightforward reflective solar heating, insulating windows with bubble wrap (it’s really cheap, really efficient, and looks good), geodesic greenhouses that withstand substantial winds, a really cool heat pump/geothermal heating system, and a common sense way to improve the efficiency of your woodstove.

“All the News We Hope to Print”

The Wampus Cat — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:16:17 +0000

I just wrote that I get way too many things to believe from AG, but they’re usually in my email inbox. Today the post office box had yet another good thing from AG, a July 4th New York Times (“liberal” is an inapt adjective). AG met up with Yes Man Jacques Servin (nee Andy Bichlbaum, Ray Thomas, etc.) in Los Angeles for an event promoting the Yes Mens’ new movie The Yes Men Fix The World at the Hammer Museum. AG managed to pick up a couple NYTs and sent one on to me. The best thing that has come in the mail in quite a long time. Thanks bucky.

Hot

The Wampus Cat — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 20:20:52 +0000

It’s really hot in Chicago right now. 97 degrees on the heat index today, 102 – 107 on the heat index tomorrow. Puts a reënactment of last Sunday’s adventure that we were planning for tomorrow into question. [Forecast from Weather Underground, or closer to home from the top of Ryerson.]

What to Do About Chimpanzees

The Wampus Cat — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:10:41 +0000

Here’s an older article from the NYT written by Charles Siebert about the state of research performed on chimpanzees in the US today, and what happens to them after they are no longer needed for that research. It raises some interesting questions and is worth a read. [Photo from the article; via wndrflu]

The Wampus Cat — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:36:00 +0000

Just a neat video.

[Via NYT City Room story “Make Way for Ducklings, Take 2”]

The Wampus Cat — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:58:59 +0000

We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? Not very long.
Michael Steel, RNC Chairman, guest-hosting Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” radio show March 6, 2009, via the Huffington Post

The Wampus Cat — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:32:56 +0000

These ring bubbles are an example of emergent behavior.