“The Toucan Fireplace Insert:

The Toucan can be burned in a traditional fireplace, fireplace insert or self-standing wood stove (if it fits) to generate comforting flames, some heat and biochar. Remember to provide the air gap at the bottom of the paint can and stop the char gasification when the flames turn blue or go out – or the biochar will be consumed and only ash will remain. There should not be additional burning embers or open flames inside the fireplace, since that may inhibit or disrupt the typical top-down pyrolysis of the TLUD.”

http://www.berkshares.org/

This work appears to be deeply influenced by the work of Silvio Gessel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Gesell

And non-persons don’t have any right to due process. Non-persons don’t have any right to fair treatment. Non-persons can’t own property. Non-persons can be ordered around by any level of government with impunity. Want the state to seize the means of production? Sure, it’s as simple as passing a law, or an initiative, declaring your victims to be non-persons.

I’ve wondered how the slavery issue might have been affected by recognizing the importance of clear property rights, beginning with your own body. The ideas are still current when considering other issues such as women controlling their own bodies, organ doners, various sexuality issues, and even futures when humans continue to hack themselves for enhancement or even just fashion. Happiness is a a part of that, a small part, but it’s really a much larger topic.

Slave holders could and sometimes did argue that slaves were “happy”. Some of them may well have been happy. Happiness seems a trivial idea compared to property.

E.g., he is extensively QUOTED on this subject, about midway down in http://hnn.us/articles/46460.html :

…
It seems unlikely that Jefferson plucked “the pursuit of happiness” from the prose of a Tory like Dr. Johnson. Jefferson’s intellectual heroes were Newton, Bacon, and Locke, and it was actually in Locke that he must have found the phrase. It appears not in the Two Treatises on Government but in the 1690 essay Concerning Human Understanding. There, in a long and thorny passage, Locke wrote:

The necessity of pursuing happiness [is] the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action, and from a necessary compliance with our desire, set upon any particular, and then appearing preferable good, till we have duly examined whether it has a tendency to, or be inconsistent with, our real happiness: and therefore, till we are as much informed upon this inquiry as the weight of the matter, and the nature of the case demands, we are, by the necessity of preferring and pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desires in particular cases.

Just the ideas that inspired our intellectual Founders were primarily European imports, so that defining American phrase, “the pursuit of happiness,” is not native to our shores. Furthermore, as the quotation from Locke demonstrates, “the pursuit of happiness” is a complicated concept. It is not merely sensual or hedonistic, but engages the intellect, requiring the careful discrimination of imaginary happiness from “true and solid” happiness. It is the “foundation of liberty” because it frees us from enslavement to particular desires.
…

Some lament the change since the subtlety of Locke’s though was lost. Property, in those days of slavery – indentured and otherwise – was considered to be an important or even primary route to happiness, but it lacked the fist-in-the-air thoughtlessness required to fire the mob. Few understand the context now, and few have any visceral understanding of freedom or property since they have seldom known a world where this was not taken for granted.

It’s a distinction worth contemplating, and Locke is a writer worth further study. See also the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which had been drafted by Founder George Mason, which influenced Jefferson.

The key thing to remember is that as long as a corporation can profit from corrupting a politician, they will figure out how to do so. The only way to have uncorruptible politicians is to PROHIBIT them from having influence over corporations. Yes, that means free markets. Yes, I realize that that’s a big step to take. But so was religious freedom, and it’s worked out pretty well for us.

Separation of state and business: it’s an idea whose time has come.

Producer gas from gasification/pyrolysis is about 20% H and 20% CO. It is very different from biogas!!

See:
Rodríguez L, Salazar P and Preston T R 2009: Effect of biochar and biodigester effluent on growth of maize in acid soils. Livestock Research for Rural Development. Volume 21, Article #110. http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd21/7/rodr21110.htm

Preston T R and Rodríguez L 2009: Energy returned on energy invested (EROEI); the case for gasification as a component of an integrated live stock based farming system. Livestock Research for Rural Development. Volume 21, Article #195. http://www.lrrd.org/lrrd21/11/pres21195.htm

There are 2 critical aspects to addressing global warming and reversing desertification.

1 – reduce future emissions – for this TECHNOLOGY is absolutely essential.

2 – absorb the current excess legacy loadings already in circulation – for this BIOLOGY is absolutely essential.

The simple truth is that probably half of the current problem has been directly caused by inappropriate human management of our land. Changing this management can have an immediate impact as the presentation mentioned below shows.

Please take a few minutes and look a little more into the massive and positive impact changed grazing management could have. Professor Tim Flannery has stated that sequestering carbon into the soils of our grazing lands is one of the best means we have available to us for dealing with climate change.

There is growing concern for significant action to avoid catastrophic climate change. Please take a few minutes and look through the presentation on Soil Carbon at http://www.soilcarbon.com.au

Not enough people are yet aware of Soil Carbon and the critical role it can play in helping to reverse the impacts of global warming.

Did you know that just a 1% change in soil organic matter across just one-quarter of the World’s land area could sequester 300 billion tonnes of physical CO2?

Recent Australian studies have shown that a 1% change can occur within a few years – and in fact up to 4% changes were measured in some areas. The management changes required to achieve these increases are very readily implemented. I hope you find the presentation of interest.