[lbo-talk] DIY movement

Fernando Cassia fcassia at gmail.com
Sun Jan 23 16:02:30 PST 2011


On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 5:42 PM, Andy <andy274 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> One advantage with some of the less product-intensive approaches is
> that you can control the ingredients much more.  Product labeling
> regulations are very innocent-until-proven-guilty.  The funny thing is
> that most of the time it doesn't take any more time, and often less
> money.

Oh yes, there´s very sound HEALTH based reasons to do your own cooking, and at the lowest possible level: ie bake your own bread, but do it using natural yeast not pre-made "mixes" of the "just add water" kind.

I bake my own bread, for instance, and do my own tomato sauce starting with full tomatoes. I cannot avoid pesticides sprayed on crops and fruit, but at least I do not add artficial flavours, chemical sweeteners (Aspartame), flavour enhancers (MSG - monosodic glutamate), artificial colors, etc

I recommend reading Excitotoxins: the taste that kills http://ho.io/j353

And http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_coloring#Artificial_coloring_in_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartaric_acid#Derivatives

But this has to do with being a bit health-conscious and a cheap bastard (I was going to write "penniless freelancer" but that´d sound too self-deprecating ;). I do not think this qualifies as being part of any movement to save the world.

Would I do my own electronics? certainly not. While electronic DIY kits are fun to understand how electronics works or perhaps do some prototyping, I´m avoiding the soldering iron more and more, because I know all that all those lead and resin fumes end up in my lungs and then in my blood stream.

Controlling health risks from rosin (colophony) based solder fluxes http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg249.pdf

Plus, there´s a scale of integration nowadays -with surface-mount components and multi-layer circuit boards- that make DIY impractical, requiring expensive equipment and robotic assembly.

If you want to play around there´s Arduino based projects, http://ho.io/j354 but that´s as far as it gets.

I also enjoy drilling and making my own furniture whenever possible, but lacking the work space and hig-end tools, I stick to shelves and drawers.

So, useful yes. Healthy? even more so. World-changing "movement"... I have my doubts... FC



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list