Category — EVENTS

Simpsons endorse off-grid lifestyle

Fox continues to dribble out info about the upcoming, record-setting 500th Simpsons episode, in which Homer and family go to live off the grid.

What will Mr Burns think?

We already covered the basic news that the family are ejected from Springfield and find a warm welcome in an off-grid community.

Now it transpires that the episode will also include an appearance by Julian Assange, the autocratic Wikileaks founder, who is living with the off-gridders when The Simpsons arrive. (more…)

There's no Remembrancer here, dear

The gloves are off in the 100-day standoff between the City of London Corporation and London Occupy protesters.

Occupy organisers plan to take over more buildings in the next few weeks, as the movement focuses public attention on finance industry billionaires. This evening it offered to vacate squatted buildings in return for concessions from City grandees on the transparency of their fundraising and lobbying operations.

After eviction orders were handed out to the St Paul’s and Bank of Ideas squatters by the High Court last week, the Occupy movement took a new building last morning, in the Barbican area of the City of London, and organisers expect to move into other addresses over the next few days. (more…)

Makers respond to growing interest in off-grid lifestyle

We’ve known for a while that the milestone 500th episode of “The Simpsons” would come somewhere early in 2012, but FOX has now nailed down a date for the episode: Sunday, Feb. 19.

The episode is called “At Long Last Leave,” and  scant details have been released by makers Fox.  We only know the episode involves the Simpsons being evicted from Springfield and taking up residence with an off the grid community outside town. When Homer and family try to return home they are treated so badly they come to respect the warm welcome they received from the off-gridders.

Its not the first time Homer and family have toyed with the off-grid life.  (more…)

Its really easy to upload video to this site, and we need your help building a global portrait of off-grid living. Please send us your Christmas off-grid family snaps or phone-videos.

PLEASE send us any video footage, whether its shot on a phone or a camcorder or a film camera.  Its really easy,so there will be no hassle with snail-mailing a DVD or fiddling with YouSendIt.  We have our own uploader that sends the footage to our YouTube channel.

Curry - approves of thrift store aesthetic

How to live well on $20,000 a year?  Go off the grid said the Today show at 8.10am.

Its peak time for the Breakfast show, and yesterday they used it to announce what host Anne Curry called “the new American dream, and it’s not about buying a big house…..its about comfortably living on less. And for some, even leaving your things behind to pursue your passion.”

The couple interviewed on the slot live off  the grid in Maine. ”Theirs is a life of living without. No heat, savings, life insurance, trips to the mall or cable TV (more…)

Ready for anything

The London Occupation has just decided to invest in solar panels, to guarantee themselves at least a few kilowatt hours of electricity a day.  Two large panels and a battery are all they need to keep a laptop powered indefinitely.

Across the world, tent cities have sprung up in downtown centers.  They do not just happen, but require hours of daily planning.  Skilled chefs, IT consultants, lawyers, Bushcraft experts and others have kept the show on the road. (more…)

Opting out is the best choice for many

As the Euro bail-out moves closer,  chances of a global economic collapse are receding.  American growth has today been rerated at 2.5% – nothing compared to China’s 9% but quite respectable considering the state of the economy.
The Euro rescue package being put in place is an enormous victory for the top 1%, and will allow the richest to continue to accumulate wealth on a grand scale.  Do not expect fighting in the streets,  because most people who currently have jobs and own houses will keep both.  Yes there will be mass protests at public spending cuts and there will be a VERY large minority who will be foreclosed, fired or both.
Almost every ordinary working American and European will feel the threat of redundancy, of not being able to meet mortgage or health insurance payments. In America there will be little in the way of a welfare net for these unlucky ones, especially the middle aged,  once they have had their two years of benefits.
So the need to have an off-grid plan is increasingly obvious to growing numbers of people who see they are moving backwards. (more…)

Great blog in the New York Times says OWS is a new form of political disobedience – refusing to obey the basic rules of political discourse, that there must be policy demands, leaders etc.

The author BERNARD E. HARCOURT, a professor of law at Chicago says that the New Politics is “a continuous choice between kinds of regulation and how they distribute wealth in society….what is required is constant vigilance of all the micro and macro rules that permeate our markets, our contracts, our tax codes, our banking regulations, our property laws — in sum, all the ordinary, often mundane, but frequently invisible forms of laws and regulations that are required to organize and maintain a colossal economy in the 21st-century and that constantly distribute wealth and resources.” (more…)

WT6500- Gamechanger

Good news for homeowners and other small users who have a lot of wind in their area but have not trusted wind technology until now.  Honeywell have launched a $5000 turbine that is far more effective than any other known technology and pulls a decent current from winds as mild as just TWO miles per hour. (Buy it here)

Individual wind power have never caught the mass market, because small turbines are noisy, inefficient, require maintenance and break down a lot. Most small turbines need strong winds to turn a heavy central generator which creates current — the generator is positioned at the blades’ center, which moves at one tenth the speed of the periphery. And less speed translates to less power.

Honeywell’s wheel-shaped WT6500 takes an entirely new approach. (more…)