Vitamins D and K — way more important than you thought
By John Silveira
While we are waiting for the Coronavirus pandemic to subside enough so society can get back to normal, there are powerful and simple remedies we can employ to safeguard our health against...
Where our farm animals come from
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Where our farm animals come from
By John Silveira
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Issue #105 • May/June, 2007
We don't know how far back the domestication of animals goes. But we do know it is a process, rather than a single...
The world’s least-free country
By John Silveira
Issue #77 • September/October, 2002
Here's a quiz: Which is the freest country on earth? The answer's easy. It's the United States. Ask anyone. And why are we the freest? Not because we're...
How big is the solar system?
By John Silveira
Issue #60 • November/December, 1999
In artists' renderings of the solar system we often see the sun represented by a small sphere with the planets drawn fairly close by. In truth, drawings like...
Was the first government gun confiscation attempt foiled by an unsung colonial heroine?
By John Silveira
Issue #119 • September/October, 2009
Gun control people don't seem to get just how deeply etched into the American psyche gun ownership goes and that the resistance to being disarmed by their own...
Bartering for bad times
By John Silveira
Issue #138 • November/December, 2012
Bartering may not be a part of your life, right now, but if there's a deepening of the recession, or it becomes a depression, or we enter a...
The coming ice age
By John Silveira
Issue #86 • March/April, 2004
As little as 30 years ago the talk wasn't about global warming, it was about an imminent ice age. Is an ice age likely? Even possible? Consider this:...
Who were the best…and worst U.S. Presidents?
By John Silveira
Issue #49 • January/February, 1998
It was one of those days I love. We were between deadlines and Dave, Bill, Mac, and I had gone fishing on the lake. Dave, of course, is...
The greatest American who was never President
By John Silveira
Issue #60a • November/December, 1999
"The election's next year, right?" I asked.
Dave Duffy, the publisher of Backwoods Home Magazine, was editing a rather lengthy article on water. I don't know if he didn't...
The world is coming to an end… and this time, I’m not kidding
By John Silveira
Issue #114 • November/December, 2008
If you haven't already heard, on September 10, 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located on the border of France and Switzerland, was turned on for a test...
We don’t need no steenking 2nd Amendment
By John Silveira
Issue #58 • July/August, 1999
I usually get up to the magazine from southern California in plenty of time for the bimonthly deadline. Not this issue. I was late and way behind. But...
Are aliens stealing our honeybees?
By John Silveira
Issue #106 • July/August, 2007
What would happen if all the honeybees disappeared? According to some pundits we'd see a collapse in much of our food base followed by shortages, turmoil, and, depending...
The threat of electromagnetic pulse!
By John Silveira
Issue #132 • November/December, 2011
I like "doomsday" scenarios even ridiculous ones, such as the supposed Mayan calendar prophecy for 2012 or what had been Y2K doom-and-gloom leading up to the year...
George Washington Carver — He wrote the book on self-reliance
By John Silveira
Issue #31 • January/February, 1995
"What were you listening to when I got to your house? Sounded nice. I don't think I've ever heard it before."
O.E. MacDougal looked at me from across the...
Subduction zone tsunami — What the residents of the Pacific Northwest have to fear
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Subduction zone tsunami
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By John Silveira
Issue #94 • July/August, 2004
I was sitting in my cubicle poring over a map of the Oregon coastactually, just that part of the coast that is Gold Beach where Backwoods...
Science and truth. Are they related?
By John Silveira
Issue #46 • July/August, 1997
It was an argument about science. Dave and I were on one side, Dave's friends Tom and Bill, though curiously nonallied, were on the other. I say nonallied...
