Man (Re)Builds Mexican Island Paradise on 250,000 Recycled Floating Bottles

Almost everyone wants to live on a tropical island, but who can afford it? Well start saving up your empty plastic water and soda bottles (and caps) because you can follow the example of Richie Sowa and simply build your own. Mr. Sowa has taken over a quarter million empty bottles (for floatation), lashed bamboo and plywood together for the foundation and put a mangrove, a composting toilet, solar oven, house and multiple beaches to create his own little floating paradise. It looks like he's encouraging others to follow his example. Here's a little video, have a look.

Travel Photo of the Week

Aogashima, Phillipine Sea

Bach's Goldberg Variations - FREE!

Pianist Kimiko Ishizaka and MuseScore, an open source music notation editor have released this beautiful new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, recorded on a Bosendorfer 290 Imperial at the Teldex Studios, Berlin. This is another successfully funded Kickstarter project. Free to listen and download.

12 "Damn Fabulous" Tiny House Interiors

Here's a nice little photo spread from Relaxshacks.com. Twelve really beautiful, tiny home interiors.

I really like the one to the right. Lots of wood. Plenty of bookshelf space.

Earth Ponds

Water fascinates people.  Beaches, rivers, lakes, ponds, even streams and babbling brooks. Here's a website that gives guidance on the art of creating man-made bodies of water.

Earthponds.com offers books, videos and consulting and in the words of author and site creator Tim Matson, "Earth Ponds is an aquacultural education, design, and consulting service with more than twenty years experience. We offer a best selling series of books and videos on various aspects of ponds, ponds design, construction, maintenance, and ponds restoration."

Fun Time! A Prairie Home Companion

Last night my wife and I celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary (a couple weeks late) by taking in the dress rehearsal of today's Prairie Home Companion show at Wolf Trap here in Vienna, VA. I've listened to the show, on-air, for almost thirty years and this is the first time I've seen it live.

What fun! It started with Garrison and the audience singing "The Star Spangled Banner" before the show's opening song "Tishomingo Blues". So much good music! Shawn Colvin, Heather Masse and Sara Watkins were the guests. A great Guy Noir story and of course the news from Lake Wobegon.

If you get the chance, see the show live, but hurry. It seems that Mr. Keillor has announced his retirement next year.

Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return?

One of the problems that humans face, cognitively speaking, is the impulse to deny the existence of something they don't like or believe in until it overwhelms them . Cultures that have endured collapse set the example. Generally anyone sounding an alarm in these cultures would be ignored, marginalized and sometimes killed to preserve the illusion that everyone agreed that everything was alright.

Well chicken little has been raising the alarm about severe environmental consequences if we don't change our ways for some time now and a new book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, is putting forward the proposition that it's too late.

The book's author, Jorgen Randers of the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, argues that in the second half of the 21st century that our culture will collapse due to severe global warming.

From the Scientific American review: "Most worrisome, Randers notes, greenhouse gases are being emitted twice as fast as oceans and forests can absorb them. Whereas in 1972 humans were using 85 percent of the regenerative capacity of the biosphere to support economic activities such as growing food, producing goods and assimilating pollutants, the figure is now at 150 percent—and growing."

Heads up. Sky IS falling. Scientific American reviews the book here.

31 More Ways To Use A Pallet!

I've seen plenty of info on pallet gardens (gardens that make use of vertical space), but here is a great article, from the brightnest blog, on the clever use these ubiquitous urban/suburban items. Here's a picture to pique your interest.

Many more great pics at the article. I especially like the outdoor shelves and the kitchen rack. The patio deck table is also nice. I'm intrigued with use of hardware style swivel wheels on some of the pieces.

Travel Photo of the Week

Bali, Indonesia Photo by Valentino Lumanto

Why Great Ideas Come When You Aren’t Trying

This is a little something that I've known forever. As an artist, I've have found down-time to be one of the most important things I can do to remain creative. Now it looks like this is one of the things ALL of us can do to work through problems and find answers.

In this Nature article, psychologists Benjamin Baird and Jonathan Schooler at the University of California, Santa Barbara, gave 145 undergraduate students two 'unusual uses' tasks that gave them two minutes to list as many uses as possible for common, everyday objects such as toothpicks, clothes hangers and bricks.

"After the two minutes were over, participants were given a 12-minute break, during which they rested, undertook a demanding memory activity that required their full attention or engaged in an undemanding reaction-time activity known to elicit mind-wandering. A fourth group of students had no break. All participants were then given four unusual-uses tasks, including the two that they had completed earlier. Those students who had done the undemanding activity performed an average of 41% better at the repeated tasks the second time they tried them. By contrast, students in the other three groups showed no improvement. The work will be published shortly in Psychological Science."

So there you have it. Now we know for sure that keeping your nose to the grindstone will only result in big cosmetic surgery bills. Instead kick back, take that break and be more resourceful AND creative.