How I Got Worms and How You Can Get Them, too

It all started in January. My new year's resolution was to see if I could eat a raw food diet for a whole month. Yes, raw. No pizza, no cheeseburgers, and no Chick-fil-a. Only fruits, and vegetables.

Jealous. 

Believe me its not easy in the dead of winter. I survived and felt pretty good towards the end. I did not give up beer and wine. I am not that crazy. Interested? This book was my guide.

One secret for surviving this type of radical (at least it was radical for me) diet change was buying a good juicer. This one is awesome. You can put whole apples in it. I made and continue to make in the morning something called Green Lemonade (4 apples, a lemon, some ginger root, 4 celery sticks, and kale) Man, you feel pumped in the mornings with this. No one can say this bulldozing loving engineer is not green. It oozes green goodness.

As you can imagine, with this much juicing you really generate a lot of pulp. We were filling our compost bin outside too fast. However, our daughter needed a science fair project idea and we needed a better way of handling this pulp.

Enter worms.

After buying some red wrigglers (another story for another blog post) we went to work building the worms a home to feed on our pulp.  Here is what we did.

First, the materials. 

The worms.

Added cardboard to the bottom.

Next added a mixture of soil, newspaper and leaves.

Here is food, the juice pulp. UMMM So good.

This is a good Saturday afternoon project.  There is nothing like showing guests at your house the worm home that resides under the kitchen sink.

The Cuyahoga River Fire Myth

So, this is where it all started. This is the river that burned. I remember visiting Cleveland last year about this time of year and thinking these thoughts as we walked along the Cuyahoga riverfront.

We all know the story. On June 22, 1969, an oil slick and debris in the Cuyahoga river caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio. This event would become the "poster child" of environmental degradation and some would say the impetus of the American environmental movement. So how bad was this fire?

Here is story that ran on page 11 of the Cleveland's Plain Dealer:

A burning oil slick floating on the Cuyahoga River caused $50,000 damage to two key railroad trestles at the foot of Campbell Road Hill S.E. about noon yesterday, closing one to traffic.

Ballalion 7 Fire chief Bernard E. Campbell said the fire was reported at 11:56 a.m. and was under control by 12:20 p.m. The burning slick floated under the wooden bridges and set them on fire. Cause of the blaze was undetermined, said Campbell. A fireboat battled the flames on the water while units from three battalions brought the fire on the trestles under control.

Campbell said a bridge belonging to Norfolk and Western Railway Co. sustained $45,000 damage, closing both of its tracks. The other, one-track trestle is open. The fire did $5,000 damage to the timbers of this Newburgh & South Shore Railroad Co. crossing.

Flames climbed as high as five stories, said Campbell. Campbell pointed out a fireboat patrols the Cuyahoga River daily checking for oil slicks and clearing them away. He said waterfront industries are responsible, dumping oil wastes into the river rather than reclaiming them.

So in summary:

• This Cuyahoga River fire lasted just thirty minutes.

• The fire only caused 50,000 dollars in damage mostly to a few railroad bridges.

And more importantly,

• No one has been able to produce a photo of this Cuyahoga fire.
  

So, how did this event become a legend?

When Time magazine ran a story of this, they used a photo from the 1952 fire on the river. Apparently, there were fires in multiple years. Fires occurred on the Cuyahoga River in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, and in 1952. The 1952 fire was actually the worst causing over 1.5 million dollars in damage.

The start of our environment movement was actually propelled using a picture from the previous decade. Humm. What current stories this earth day week could we reuse pictures from the last decade?

Here is the 1952 picture used in 1969.

Learn more about water and the hidden world of infrastructure at WaterCrunch

Visit me on Twitter.

South Carolina's Water Bill Needs a Nudge : Can Tony Help?

Last fall, I admit it. I bought a series of DVDs that are advertised heavily on late night infomercials. Ok. I am sure I am not the first person to do this. A friend of mine swore to me that they were good. 

You may have seen them. P90X consists of 12 gruelling workouts hosted by Tony Horton, designed to transform your body from regular to ripped in just 90 days. Now I am too old to be worried about getting ripped, however, I was interested in adding variety to my normal workout training for my triathlons. 

Here is Tony talking about Ab Ripper X. Tony is good, but all cheese.

Now I have learned a few motivational quotes from Tony that may help South Carolina's water bill stalled in the statehouse. As I have mentioned over the years, South Carolina has no authority in permitting water. For several years now we have tried to get a bill passed. Last year the bill died under the weight of disagreements about downstream minimum flow and water use restrictions. 

It has a small window of passing this year, but that window is closing. A Senate Agriculture subcommittee postponed a decision on the bill today with the hope of taking a vote on it next week. Although it may not be the best bill, I believe this bill is better than no bill. 

Now watching these videos over and over, I have memorized some of Tony's cheesy quotes. Here are some of my favorites from these videos that could be piped into the State House: 

• are you ready?....'cause its coming 

• just keep coming back everyday and pushing play. 

• Do your best and... Forget the rest 

• yeah get the fire in there your gonna need it, oh the burn is here when the burn comes breathe breathe more. 

• You got to bring it 

• Hamburger bad, fries bad, coca-cola bad. There you go, I said it, drink your water people!
  

5 Top Cool Tools for a Modern Arctic Survey Expedition

Wouldn't it be cool to be on an expedition? One of my favorite expedition accounts was Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. You just can't beat that golden age of polar exploration.

This morning I was reading about a modern expedition that is currently working to reach the North Geographic pole. Trying to get a better understanding of the sea ice, this team will travel for over 90 days over drifting sea ice taking over 50 different types of measurements and samples.

While the herioic clash of man versus nature is a bit muted in the modern age we live in, it is still impressive. So what are their top tools?

1. Don't leave home without your SPRITE.

SPRITE comprises a robust and portable, ice-penetrating impulse radar. At just 4kg in weight mounted behind the survey’s sledge-boat effectively converting the traditional sledge into a small survey vessel

2. Hands Free Instant Communication 

Everyone wears a headset and all the communication signals are routed through the sledge. Basically anything they say is bounced off a sledge and a satellite and is heard back at their UK base and anything said in the UK base can be heard by all the ice team.

3. Artic-Proof Computer 

The custom-built, onboard sledge computer coupled to a multi-modem, Iridium data-uplink system was designed to withstand the deep cold and rough use in a polar environment. This equipment transmits all of the vital science, image, audio, video and bio-telemetry data back to the UK base.

4. Don't Just Guess on your Wellbeing


The team will also be wearing the Equivital™ physiological monitoring system, developed by the Cambridge-based company, Hidalgo. The Equivital™ units will continuously measure and record the physiological condition of the team and detailed physiological data, such as heart rate, respiration rate and effort, skin temperature and body orientation.

Team members will also ingest a ‘core pill’ which passes through the stomach into the intestines. This pill contains a miniature temperature sensor, battery and radio transmitter and communicates core body temperature readings to the Equivital™ unit.

5. An Ultralight CTD



This system consists of an ultra light weight winch system and a high resolution Conductivity Temperature Depth sensor package (CTD). After a small hole is made in the ice, this CTD sensor is lowered from just under the ice to a depth of 300m at about 0.5 m/s, and samples conductivity, temperature and depth 4 times a second, and records this within the package, allowing the data to be downloaded later to the onboard sledge computer.

You can follow the team here.