Selfsufficientish.com

I think the key phrase is "evidence-based medicine" - thats what counts. AIUI all doctors used to genuinely believe that stomach ulcers were caused by stress until someone doggedly did the work to isolate campylobacter pyloris as the cause. Long-term the evidence wins out if enough people ...

basil_brush wrote:Alternatively maybe he could remove most of the water by reverse osmosis.

ok - what do i need to have a go at this? I've heard the words before (biology textbooks?) but never seen it as a practical thing - is it?

I was going to link to Ben's page as well. http://www.badscience.net is the online version, although I'm not allowed to access it at work. It's good to have someone who actually applies science to pseudo-scientific stories, and isn't afraid to take journalists to task for their mistakes. but after ...

Any idea of EROEI? - how much energy does it take to distill a litre of alcohol, compare to the energy content of that litre?

My guess is that it takes a lot !

The Bad Science column every saturday in the Grauniad is a good counter to some of these health stories. And its online :-)

There was one on coffee - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... n-goldacre

absolutely - they are always moving - so just take lots of pics in the hope that one is in focus... in the old days that would just waste film, but who cares these days?

Anyone remember the drawings of Clifford Harper from the pre-Thatcher era?

(just came across him again here http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/shedtime/ !)

OK thanks - looks like we'll have to wait a while for the others then!

Meanwhile here she is:

Our White Star produced her first egg today (whoopee!)... this appears to be correlated with the comb on her head growing rapidly in the last week or so... is this a reliable sign of a hen reaching sexual maturity and being about to lay? Some of the other chooks are larger and look more "hen-sh...

well they already ignore my intentions :-)

as to restricting food - their pellets are in a big plastic hopper suspended on a piece of clothesline - they eat as much as they want... should I be measuring and rationing the feed?

We are new to keeping chickens and were led to believe that they will eat veggie kitchen scraps... well ours seem to be fussier than the average cat and leave most things.... any recommendations?

Thoughts:
Supersoakers.
return the poo to the owners if you want to make a statement.. or
chuck it on the compost heap
are the cats doing smth useful like catching rats?

FWIW in the North of England last year, strawberries did Ok despite the lousy summer, but the birds still got too many of them.... you watch a particularly big one get just ripe (that'll be ready tomorrow!) tomorrow comes and its gone.. the little bu&&ers know when they are ripe too. I chuck...

Only worry about it in the summer... In the winter the "wasted" heat is useful.

My jungle garden was (and partly still is) covered with couch grass. 3 years ago I made a start on converting it to allotment style veggie patches. The couch grass was only part of the problem - underneath was the wreck of a huge greenhouse - every spadeful contained broken bricks, broken glass, iro...