EveryBody Special is a new, low-cost wooden coffin created to meet extreme demand during emergency situations.

Designed by Dutch EveryBody Coffins, the EveryBody Special is a modular coffin that’s extremely easy to assemble. No tools, nails or screws are required – the pieces just click together. The standard material used is 12 mm multilayered wood, and more environmentally friendly options are also available.

Since they’re lightweight and packaged in flat-packs (Ikea-style), transporting EveryBody coffins is very cost efficient: up to 570 extra large (XL) caskets fit into a 20 foot container. Combined with their easy assembly, this makes the coffins highly suitable for burial and cremation in disaster areas and epidemic situations. The company hopes to offer a more dignified, humane alternative to plastic body bags that are often the only option when large-scale disaster strikes.

Besides selling to governmental and aid organisations, EveryBody is also offering its product to commercial distributors in those regions where consumers will welcome a low-cost alternative to expensive caskets. As we’ve pointed out before, everything can be reinvented!

Coffin spotting at SpringWise
Website: http://www.everybodycoffins.com

Couples shouldn’t be so determined to sleep together

Dr Neil Stanley, a sleep expert at the University of Surrey, said: “It’s not surprising that people are disturbed by sleeping together.

“Historically, we have never been meant to sleep in the same bed as each other. It is a bizarre thing to do.

“Sleep is the most selfish thing you can do and it’s vital for good physical and mental health.

“Sharing the bed space with someone who is making noises and who you have to fight with for the duvet is not sensible.

Once the sex becomes infrequent (or so married men assure me) why not sleep apart some of the time?

Marriage doesn’t just make men dumber. It also takes away some of their drive.

Read much more at futurePundit

Over the last 40 years farm production has become industrialized. Historically, multi purpose, hardy livestock were raised on small farms with relatively low costs inputs for housing, care and feed. Now the agriculture industry depends on highly productive specialized breeds raised in controlled environments and requiring high-cost inputs for nutrition, housing and health care.

The Slow Food movement has done a terrific job in reawakening interest in foods selected for flavour and having deep roots in regional and traditional farm settings. The organic movement documents the potential hazards of relying on food products that are laden with hormones, antibiotics and pesticides. Environmental groups have publicized the toll of intensive industrialized food operations. Slowly, the demand for flavourful food, from older breeds that thrive under natural conditions, is growing.

Despite these advances, the outlook is still not good for rare breeds.

Before we lose the traditional breeds that are hardy, disease resistant and well suited to natural production methods. These breeds are the gene pool, the only source of genetic material that exists to produce future generations of livestock. Many breeds are facing extinction, or severe loss of genetic diversity. Support is needed from farmers, governments, and those who value traditional livestock.

Rare breeds provide a healthy and environmentally sound alternative to industrial food. Farmers of heritage breeds typically look to the long-term benefits of their operations and take care not deplete their resources.

Rare Breeds and Small Farmers

We’re using straw.

The estimate is that one bale of straw is 200 dollars worth of electricity or about 200 dollars worth of natural gas.

The cost of heating with wheat straw is similar to that of using coal but straw fuel is about 90 percent less expensive than heating with either natural gas or electricity.

We put 16 bales on a conveyer, the conveyer feeds them into the system. We have a shedder that shreds the bales into finer particles and delivers it into the primary combustion chamber where we essentially do a low temperature burn, or create smoke.

Then we take that smoke and send it into a secondary chamber, or afterburner, and we burn it in there at two thousand degrees Fahrenheit which then means we get full and complete combustion, clean gas that we then move over into our heat exchanger to heat water. The water, in turn, heats the facilities. via FarmScape

“I have no personal interest in the territorial boundaries of knowledge communities.” [here]

Use it.
Use the web.

Learn to print what you’ve been saying.

It’s healthy.

Free.
Available.
Rewarding.
Democratic.

The future has not once been what you were thinking.

Deep mud, sand and snow are no match for this go-anywhere mutated motorbike, cites Popular Science.

The design entered the 2006 Michelin Challenge Design showcasing vehicles made especially for California’s diverse and often rugged topography.

Hyanide is designed to run on a flexible rubber tread that spans the machine’s entire underside. So if any part of the bottom is touching the ground, the Hyanide should be able to move, no matter how deep the quagmire, no matter how rough the terrain. The tank-like tread consists of 77 identical segments—each made from hard plastic covered with tire rubber —held together by Kevlar rope. Each segment flexes independently, making the tread significantly more limber than if its components were rigid. Not only does this setup help with traction, but it would allow the tank-motorcycle to corner like no other vehicle.

You say tomato:
“The problem of pronouncing names correctly is so extensive, and the possibility of gaffes so omnipresent, that the BBC employs an entire pronunciation unit, a small group of dedicated orthoepists (professional pronouncers) who spend their working lives getting to grips with these illogical pronunciations so that broadcasters don’t have to do it on the air.”

Airlines are set to pump $2.6 trillion into buying new commercial jets over the next 20 years, aerospace group Boeing has predicted.

Boeing expects airlines to take delivery of 27,200 new passenger jets and cargo planes by 2025 – doubling the world fleet. via the BBC

A growing number of livestock producers are at least anxious about the impact on feed prices and supplies if corn is redirected to ethanol.

A reply from USDA Under Secretary J.B. Penn:

“All of a sudden we’ve seen a real increase in demand for corn for ethanol. This is a really big development. Suddenly, we have the opening of a market that has never been there.

Since the time of Christ, corn has been food. But now agriculture is trying to produce industrial products. And this situation has been greeted with great glee in farm country.

Now we’re in a short-run situation where strong ethanol demand and strong livestock demand for feed are competing. We’re trying to get more markets open for products like beef. This is one of those great situations for farmers.

In the past we’ve all been concerned about surpluses. My sense is that we may have some short-term frictions here. Don’t underestimate the technology and the entrepreneurial spirit when folks put their minds to something. I think we’ll be able work through things and capitalize on the renewable fuels and meet the demand for feed and exports.”

via agweb

Thought tips:

Change is neither global nor universal.
Solutions will vary by location, region and company.
Regional resources, infrastructure and taxation are critical factors.
Choices are actions by many not headlines for many.

Mind Hacks posits that the exact function of dreaming is still largely a mystery, but here’s a recent popular scientific theory.

Therefore I will try to explain a current view of dreaming and its possible functions, developed by myself and many collaborators, which we call the Contemporary Theory of Dreaming. The basic idea is as follows: activation patterns are shifting and connections are being made and unmade constantly in our brains, forming the physical basis for our minds. There is a whole continuum in the making of connections that we subsequently experience as mental functioning. At one end of the continuum is focused waking activity, such as when we are doing an arithmetic problem or chasing down a fly ball in the outfield. Here our mental functioning is focused, linear and well-bounded. When we move from focused waking to looser waking thought–reverie, daydreaming and finally dreaming–mental activity becomes less focused, looser, more global and more imagistic. Dreaming is the far end of this continuum: the state in which we make connections most loosely.

Link to Scientific American article ‘Why do we dream?’.

I caught these quips just moments ago.

“I’m not usually one for reflection…
“The wedding is just two months away…
“My job has gone from contract to full time…
“Woohoo! It’s a hockey nut’s dream.

Said to self, “Self, this is, always was, our source of energy.”

Ponder this:

Then ponder this site occasionally,

a study in manufacturing our times:

And memorize this:

mesmeriffic

If I’ve learned anything, I’m little.
All these years I thought that what I knew about big stuff mattered. HA.
It only matters to big people and there aren’t any. HA. HA.