Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Monthly archive for March 2006
Showing results 16 - 20 of 28 for the month of March, 2006.
14 Mar 2006
Over recent months babies have been back in my life again, not this time through my own procreating (I have gone into retirement with such things, with a distinguished service record…) but through friends and family. Firstly my sister and her lovely man have announced that they are expecting (see scan, left), and that I will become Uncle Rob (a title of which I shall be inordinately proud) for the first time. It was a complete surprise and is deeply wonderful.
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14 Mar 2006
So, over the last few days I have offered five possible things that can be done with soon-to-be-redundant oil barrels, I’d be fascinated to hear yours. What do you use them for? How have you seen other people using them? People use them for all sorts of things, and of course I have only scratched the surface. The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude made a huge art installation called “The Wall” that consisted of 13,000 oil barrels formed into a huge wall. I’m sure there are other far more practical and less ridiculous uses to which they can be put, so do let us know, from the sublime to the ridiculous, anything goes….
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13 Mar 2006
In an interview with Paul McCartney (which you can hear here) , he talks about the song ‘Yesterday’ (one of my least favourite Beatles songs…). He said he woke up one day with this song in his head, and couldn’t think where he had heard it, and went around asking his friends what this song was. He’d play it to them and they would all tell him they hadn’t heard it before. After a while he realised he must have made it up, but still wondered if one day the person who wrote the original would get in touch (now there’s an idea for making a few quid…). In putting together this, the last in the Top Five Things To Do With Oil Barrels series, I want to offer an idea which, likewise, I am sure is not mine, but which, try as I might, I am unable to find where it came from.
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10 Mar 2006
This is possibly the single most wonderful things you could do with oil barrels. How about converting them into the most efficient form of space heating imaginable? All for just a few quid? In such a way as to heat the house as well as a beautiful heated cob bench, bed, whatever? I am always drawn towards technology that is simple enought that I can build it, look after it and explain it. The Rocket Stove is potentially one of the greatest inventions of recent years, and one you really should know about. Why there aren’t research facilities full of engineers running around with barrels and cob and making fires to test their amazing new creations is beyond me….
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9 Mar 2006
An energy descent culture will need to entertain itself of an evening, as plasma screen televisions, home cinema units, indeed most electricity based entertainment will be out. We will need to rediscover the art of making music rather than consuming it through electronic media. Oil drums will come in very handy, we can make them into steel drums. Steel drum music originated in Trinidad, and is now a world wide phenomenon. It has evolved into doing some very innovative modern interesting stuff too. On DJ Shadow’s Diminishing Returns CD (hard to get, but usually available on EBay) he has a version of Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’ played by a steel band, which is rather wonderful.
Read more»
Over recent months babies have been back in my life again, not this time through my own procreating (I have gone into retirement with such things, with a distinguished service record…) but through friends and family. Firstly my sister and her lovely man have announced that they are expecting (see scan, left), and that I will become Uncle Rob (a title of which I shall be inordinately proud) for the first time. It was a complete surprise and is deeply wonderful. 
