Sustainability the Urban Way

I recently saw a documentary that showed Jean-Michelle Couteau (son of the legendary oceanic explorer Jacques Cousteau) and his team in the Amazon.  By the way, you can see Couteau's legacy at http://www.cousteau.org/.  This triggered in me some new and old ideas in my head.  Cousteau's team maintain that agriculture and natural habitat can coexist successfully with some education.  Today urban areas rely on rural areas for resources such as food and raw material.  I think we should start making urban areas sustainable.  Growing food and recycling processed materials for raw materials are a couple of ideas worth investigating.

Of the many things that are transported to urban areas, not many are as quite important as food.  We could try to grow food in the urban landscape.  Some people are thinking about growing crops indoors, and some even are looking to do that in an abandoned high-rise building, or at least in a building with several floors.  The biggest question I have for such a project is can we grow crops with artificial light?  Being able to use artificial light to grow crops is going to be essential for vertical farms.  I assume some full spectrum light would be required.  If such a light could be delivered from LEDs then the keep up cost should be low.  We have hydroponic technology, which does not require soil, but does require nutrients and light.  We also have a good understanding on what constitutes soil and how to compost.  Using processed soil/compost or hydroponics have their own set of pros and cons.  I suppose either could be used in a vertical farm.  Such a vertical farm could potentially grow crops year round.  One idea I had was that a farms could use the elevators to transport customers to the floor where the crops reached harvest.  Thus crops don't have to be moved anywhere while they grow, just redirect the customers and services to the crops.  There could be a floor for composting and nutrient handling.  Electrical power would be key to keep up.  Solar panels on the roof would be great, but also custom wind generators would be good to use in conjunction with solar panels.  Of course today we have the choice of using photovoltaic solar panels or solar thermal panels to generate electricity.  In my mind I wonder how much intake it such a farm would need.  Like any processing plant, the intake has to equal the output.  Some fertilizer would be needed to intake, seeds would be needed as well.  Water could be managed and possibly reclaimed.  Reclaiming nutrients via composting and water would help reduce the overhead of materials needed in such a farm.  If such farms could be viable they may reduce the travel time of materials to urban areas thus reducing the gas needed to transport them.


For raw materials, there is already a recycling market.  Metals, plastics, oils, battery material, paper are some of the raw materials being recycled.  In any urban area there is a recipe of raw materials that is used.  Identifying these materials and amount could be key to start a concerted effort to recycle materials from waste.  In some cases I'm sure there would be needed some research to break down materials to more basic parts that are usable.  This effort would require a large amount of energy.  Using renewable energies such as solar and wind could augment the energy needed.  But I think some major source of energy would be needed such as nuclear energy.  One idea I had was to reclaim materials from air pollutions such as carbon and others.  So I say more research in recycling is needed.


The International Space Station has a module that reclaims waste water for astronaut and cosmonaut consumption.  Many cities in the world suffer from a lack of water.  Reclaiming waste water is a technology that can help many people around the world.  Urban areas have benefited in the past from the cleaning of their rivers that were used for waste.  London and Madrid come to mind.  Going a step further to reclaim water can provide the diverse uses of water in urban areas.  We drink water, we give water to our animals, we water our lawns and gardens, and we use water to transport waste.  Actually, finding an alternative way to transport waste besides water could benefit many urban areas as well.  Not having to use water to transport waste makes the water available for other uses.

Urban areas take in raw materials and create waste.  They are rich in materials that can be recycled.  They are also ever growing with more and more people.  We could do so much more in the areas of food production, recycling materials, and reclaiming water.  Doing so could make urban areas greener and more friendly to the eco-systems of Earth.

Getting Out of Emotion

I recently attended a presentation on emergency psychology.  In there they mentioned that some victims get distraught and may have physiological effects after a disaster, small or large.  Often if you get these people out of the place where the disaster happened they get better and feel better.  This prompted a reminder of something I learned early in my discovery of my gifts as an empath.  Emotion lingers in physical places.

How many times people have said, "It feels like home?"  How many times have you gone to work during your off time and it feels like your at work rather than on your off time?  This is why men tend to not hang around their work places while on their off time, of course it also ties into their sense of identity and their changing of hats or function.  As an empath I go into an art studio and I can feel the emotion of creating the art, the fears, the intensity, the focus.  When I go into a library I automatically pick up on the reading atmosphere and the quiet emotion going on.  When I go into a University's computer lab I can feel the fear and anxiety that comes with writing papers even when nobody is present at the time.  Emotion of the people previous present at a place lingers.

When I was a child I got very sick.  I was nauseous.  My brother gave me a model of a Mig 21 to build.  I built it while sick.  Afterward everytime I would touch that model, I would feel nauseous.  You may think that this was because of the memory in my brain, but if that was so why wouldn't I feel nauseous just looking at a picture of any Mig 21?  If you talk to a knot and rope expert you may find out something curious, rope gets a memory.  If you talk to a battery expert they will tell you Ni-Cad batteries get a memory.  Memory is nothing more than a recorded imprint, it doesn't have to be software.  What I am suggesting here is that emotion got imprinted on the model of the Mig 21.

So what does this mean?  It means that emotion is tangible thing that exists even outside someone.  This may also suggest that things get affected by emotions.  Perhaps even space-time gets affected by emotion as well.  Granted this is a radical thing to say.  For decades, science has been telling us that it's all in our head.  They tell us that our emotions are our emotions and something is wrong with us when we get overwhelmed.  These days Physics has got into the surreal.  They talk about not only space-time as an entity but also about 11 dimensions to include multiple universes.  The warp drive concepts assume that space-time can be manipulated.  Einstein calculations show that mass and lasers can affect or warp space-time.  Is it really so hard to understand that emotions can imprint space-time?

Places get altered by emotions which linger and affect people.  Empaths know this, and rescue workers know this on a practical level.  Knowing when to leave or stay at a location can help you get away from severe negative emotions and help you linger in a place with very good emotions.  Here is another tip, as you start to live in a new place and make a home make your emotions positive.  End fights on positive notes, and surprise your loved ones with joy.  This will help make your place full of positive emotions, a place you want to come back to.

Ancient Aliens and 2012 Apocolypse

Due to the end of the Mayan Calendar in 2012, many believe catastrophic events that will happen.  I'm a skeptic at the dogmatic idea of this premise.  Yet something has got my attention that could fit a more reasonable interpretation of the events of this age.

I've been watching Ancient Aliens show, a production of the History Channel.  This show suggests a unified theory based on ancient writings from many civilizations, history, evolution, and creationism that says extraterrestrial aliens modified primates to create the homosapien and have shown themselves as gods throughout history.  Sure, on the surface this seems like a bad or good sci-fi story.  Shows like Stargate, 2011 Space Odyssey, and Star Trek have used this idea in their stories.  As I watched the show, the things they say and expose seemed to lay out a pattern that is hard to argue against.  One thing that was shown is that the Mayan calendar shows an overall time just over 6000 years.  The Bible shows from the time of Adam to now is around 6000 years.  This means that the time of the creation of modern man was around 6000 years ago.  Is this a coincidence?  Perhaps not if the creators of man was in fact extraterrestrials instead of a god(s) we have come to believe in.  This theory would explain not only the time coincidence but the diversity of civilizations and beliefs throughout history.  At the same time this does not negate the theory of evolution.

Ancient texts from several civilizations suggest that gods or angels came on Earth, taught us skills in a diversity of technology, and procreated with man to create powerful characters.  Gensis 6, the Book of Enoch, Nors folklore, and Greek mythology all tell this story.  That would make Hercules a type of alien hybrid, and Zeus a womanizing alien according to Ancient Alien theory.  As you can see the very different cultures tell the same story and Ancient Alien theory tells why that is.

The Mayan Calendar shows the end is in December 2012.  The Bible shows catastrophes happening in the book of Revelation.  My own insight as an empath showed me in 2001, that 2010 was a key point in time for the Earth.  2010 is the first full year we had to live with the effects of the Great Recession.  Also by 2010 we live in a time post the 2004 Tsunami, 2005 Katrina Hurricane, 2001 9/11.  In 2010 we had great human suffering in the Haiti Earthquake.  I see all these as part of a great shakeup of the planet Earth.  Rather than pointing to one date to say the sky is falling, I look at a pattern over time of things happening.  This is an era of change.  I also see 2010 as a middle point in this change.  We may not be out of the woods yet. 

Will the Apocalypse occur on a certain date in 2012?  I don't think so.  I think this apocalypse is over time, and its more of a change than the end of the world.  Will aliens come and show up to tell us how to proceed?  Maybe not in an overt way, but perhaps to certain individuals as they have throughout history.