Thursday, November 11, 2004

pallet rack structure @ the incubator

im so proud of this thing



it was built out of the warehouse shelving you see at costco or
home depot. super heavy weight steel boltless shelving. we
built a structure with 3 floors and about 20 private rooms. foot
print of the whole thing was 48' x 36' ~ 1700 sq. ft.

foto fun



uploaded a bunch of pictures to tribe.net
my profile on tribe
has pics of my place in paso robles, and the pallet rack structure we had in the Brewery Downtown LA

costa rica permaculture credit union

i've been talking with this guy at the permaculture
credit union about helping sponsor loans to support
permaculture projects in developing regions. he
says if we can guarantee a loan they can manage
the loan and provide the money. further he said
they would charge their basic rate for providing
and managing the loan and then it was up to me
to negotiate anything additional for the guarantee.

so, im basically talking about providing reinsurance
for permaculture loans in developing areas. which
strikes me as being a pretty cool business as it
doesnt
actually require any capital outflow - so long as no
one defaults, and where the collateral is beautiful
land with a permaculture project started on it.

loren and i have been talking about providing
start-up funding for exceptional graduates of
permaculture programs

as loren says -
> This idea takes care of several big problems: first
> it allows for
> generations of shared ideas and similar people to
> create new farms or
> communities. I have been wondering for a while if
> this were possible
> myself. Second, it connects the right people to the
> resources they
> need to get it going, third, it allows for a kind of
> trial by doing
> before any commitment is made on either the lender
> or the borrower, so
> it solves the problem of personal presence that was
> holding me up from
> thinking generations were possible. I really like
> this idea.

surfing around it looks like there is a very well
established network of permaculture schools, farms,
communities, and retreat centers in costa rica.
http://www.permacultureportal.com/HTML/RL_Johns_CR_Farms.htm

one thought is to set up a costa rica permaculture
credit union, which works with these schools to
provide loans to their exceptional students /
residence to
purchase land and gear for setting up permaculture
farms in relatively close proximity to the initiating
school.

i really believe there's a network effect to having
more communities in a close proximity. i think it
helps
promote a healthy diverse culture and cost
savings on materials - and internet connection
among other things.

this feels fairly doable to me

i'd love to get some feedback locally
and then maybe broach the conversation
with people running permaculture schools
in costa rica.

mysticdetours

i've seriously been fantacizing about having like 20
flat panel screens to work on. as it is i have one 17"
and its stacked with windows about 10 layers deep.

anyway, i've got this window mystic detours
that i dig but don't know what to do with. so maybe
by expressing its existence out into the universe i
can be free of it and get back to my distraction.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

global vote

http://217.160.163.211/globalvote2004/

bush lost - 9% - 77%

global rich list

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

apparently an income of $100k / year
puts you in the top .6% of the population

i'd always wondered where the top 1 % started

got this from rajiv's blog
http://rajivmathew.blogspot.com/

im really diggin being able to surf and
read these guys' blogs.

makes stoked to go to india.

festivals of india

found this on ulu's blog (http://hsigo.blogspot.com/)

http://www.amantran.com/travel/festivals/default.asp

hello (again)

this is my upteenth time starting a blog.

given that i figured i'd start with some links
to the other blogs that i started and then
abandoned.

posted some links to cool political videos here
http://newvideo.blogspot.com

some friends and i have been maintaining a
poetry blog here
http:// curbsideromance.org

an older attempt at journaling online
http://myflow.blogspot.com

another older free flow blog
http://altereal.blogspot.com/

fm