I think you'd see a tech explosion with or without patents once populations reach a huge critical mass. The combination of a lot more genetic variances and chances for genius to arise combined with exchange of ideas. Humans are just naturally inquisitive and want to see better ways of "doing stuff". Once we got just a little bit beyond a mostly agrarian society people had more free time to invent and experiment. If patents were totally eliminated I still think you'd see humans building/creating/constructing. Just our nature to do so. What that would do to business I don't know, but we'd still see a lot of innovation, IMO. The bottom line is business comes after the creative urge, not before, in most cases. Real innovators do it because they want to. Here's an example from my own life. Back in the 70s I was doing a lot of off road bicycling,because it was fun,and I really wanted a fat tired multi speed bike, the skinny tired bikes had too many flats and dented rims, etc to be practical, and the fat tired single speeds didn't cut it to climb hills and go across soft ground easily, etc,-so I hand built one, and it worked quite well. Eventually these sorts of bikes began to be sold as "mountain bikes". There were a lot of guys at the same time period thinking and doing similar, and I bet all of them just wanted that sort of bike because it filled an unfilled niche at the time. Business came later. Urge to have something cool that didn't exist at the time came first. Patents had nothing to do with that urge or development at the time.
Actually since the 60's it is still way higher, like 3 times. There's been a temporary drop in *some* crime in *some* areas because of population demographics, ie, less young males in their teens and 20s in some areas, which is the closest corollary to crime in general terms. There's also been an increase in really violent crimes since a lot of states passed 2-3 strikes and you are out laws. Habitual violators find it more convenient to not leave witnesses in other words.
with that said, the purpose of the police state and all the new cameras and whatnot we talk about is to protect the rulers and their rule. It has nothing to do with fighting street crime. They sell the police state idea that way, they are going to "get tough on crime" and "terrorism", etc, but really it is to protect the elite as we transition back to a feudalistic two class society model, "technofeudalism", which is the globalists' long range plan.
...it is for the protection and convenience and *profit* of "Big Brother". When you look at it from that point of view, everything they do makes more sense.
Geeks are early adopters of new and unusual technology, as such, the early providers to the geeks can sometimes get quite rich. For just one example, who bought all the earliest computers and computer games? Who bought digital watches, or "transistor" radios?
I remember all that stuff as well, along with no school massacres (no forced drugging of kids either), no random checkpoints to stop at, no security cameras, etc. Money was still..money! Change was real silver and the paper notes were backed by silver. One of my grandmothers still had an icebox and some guy with a horse and wagon delivered the ice. The only place I saw Air Conditioning was at the movies, and it was a big deal, they advertised that as much as the movie title, and a ticket cost a quarter and there were cartoons before the movies, and sometimes those little news trailers. I even remember a 5 cent phone call, although that switched to a dime when I was still a kid,, but I made a few at a nickle.
Ya, no way to predict the future, but I will give it a SWAG anyway (this is where it gets sucky, but I'll call it like I see it).....50 years from now humans will be lucky to have that level technology that we remember as kids, because of the resource wars that will happen and from biological advances being used extensively in warfare. Forget nukes, it's the biobugs that will do in most humans, that and the accidents from "civilian" genetical modding of plants and animals.
Every technology ever invented by man has suffered bad mistakes, crashes, bugs, snafus and whatnot, but doing it with self replicating live organisms will prove to be disastrous when the accidents occur. Our collective arrogance will be the deciding factor "it's just science, stop being a luddite, nothing bad will happen-trust us!"
uh huh, yep...sure
As much as I really like all tech, I know the bad biological accidents and mistakes and on-purpose advanced weapons are coming. As will the 8 billion humans on a one billion human sized planet. Stuff's gonna happen.
Getting set to install some more water tanks in the greenhouse for fish,. and for a place for the baby ducks I'm getting this week to hang out until they get bigger. We have two little ponds in there already, but just pretty tropical fish in them. One is around 25 gallons, the other is around 400 gallons. I have some black water barrels in there already for winter heat, but dumping them out and refilling them with sand, this afternoon actually, as we have a ton of sand outside for mortar work and I need to move it out of the way. (I go in and out and do projects, jump on the net when I am inside, outside work in the heat can be nasty for neogeexzers...) The next water tanks are commercial tanks, about 60 or so gallons apiece, and I have a solar powered fountain for them to provide aeration. I think I'm going to go to bluegills though, take the heat better and I'm going to build a grasshopper 'trawl net' to work the fields with and feed those to the bluegills. In the winter I'll switch to trout, feed them minnows or crickets most likely, something I can raise inside the greenhouse better (it's 24 feet by 70 odd feet, a used commercial one we got, lotsa room for all sorts of projects, boss got it used for a grand, with us tearing it down, quite the deal really)
Mostly I try to make do with scrap stuff kicking around the farm, everything I do has to be low budget, heh.
Ya, we need more action at technocrat, c'mon over! Plenty of good articles and conversations going on. And submit your own! Real nice to have a "no troll zone" tech board.
Hmm, maybe I'll mix the tilapia with the bluegills to eat the algae, it sure does grow fast in the greenhouse. the tropical tanks I have to use chemical to keep them clean. I tried sterile white amur to eat the algae, but the dang things kept committing fishicide by jumping out of the tank, and heavy screening the top of the "pretty" ponds defeats the whole purpose. I made the mistake though of putting some minnows from the creek in there, one was a sunfish or bluegill, ATE a buncha my expensive fish, the rascal. Like around 200 clams worth. Lot of water plants in there, one day I notice "hey, where all my fish go, ain't seen 'em for awhile now...hmmmm?", then I see this fat bluegill swimming around! sheesh.
ya, I've been juiced about it for awhile now,. I might build the small scale one to show the boss. Other farms/ranches where I have worked we always disk harrowed the fields to break up the pies, but he doesn't want me to do that for some reason, thinks it will kill the grass or something.
I can throw a couple of the older calves in there maybe, and have the chicken coop trail it. then just use some old riding lawnmower and keep it attached to it all the time, you wouldn't need much to drag a small one if the wheels were gooe enough. I don't have any center irrigation stuff to try the other thing though, but that's sorta a neat idea as well, but you'd have to do something with the land the arc doesn't touch. I guess you could just hay there.
Farming is neat, all sorts of wild stuff you can try. Once I invented (but never built yet) what I called vertically integrated aquaculture, something like you were saying the chinese do. You overload the system at the cheap end, so you can harvest at the expensive end. I spent weeks on the design and tried to shop it around, no dice, to farmers I was just a young dumb hippy. Meh. Another time I did a nice interplanted crop, corn and pole beans, tried to get some farmers who did massive silage to even come up and just *look* at it, no dice. They'd rather buy in the protein or something. Corn they understand, beans they understand, but for some reason they think you can't grow them together, even though it works amazingly well, and for silage, who cares, you put it up wet anyway..
If it ain't in the agco magazines, it don't exist or it is "hippy/enviro" stuff which is cuss words to them. Amazing how many of them are so brainwashed. It's starting to change a little, especially with alternative energy, a friend of mine makes a darn good living selling and installing mostly solar water pumps to keep remote stock tanks filled.
I get to do some neat stuff here, my boss is only half way brainwashed because he's a successful inventor (some of his stuff is in about all the broiler houses out there, a chick feed system for instance) and understands that out of the box thinking might work, he'll at least listen to my wild a$$ ideas, heh. I got one we might do this fall, I got some wheat last year on my nickle and overseeded some hillsides where I thinned it out, wanted to show him it only needs some grass to hide in to sprout, that it doesn't need to be drilled in. Well, it's up and lush now, big fat protein rich seed heads,and he's impressed, he's looking into doing all our pastures next fall though, but he's running it by some of his friends who grow wheat on a big scale. Right now my cluckeraptors get grazed in one little pasture I overseeded with wheat and oats. They are just starting to "get it" on grazing,(they are all rescue birds from total inside a chicken house living, some the hybrid broilers, others are the breeders/layers for the hybrid broilers and I have some pure jersey black giants on order now, should be in soon) I have been gradually reducing their commercial feed and forcing them to graze and scratch more, seems to be working. Had to start them out with the lawn clippings, eventually one ate it, then another then another, etc. it's still a stretch to get them to really attack tall grass though.
We are doing a lot of veggies in a greenhouse, using "earthboxes", you can look those up. We are already eating squash and strawberries and stuff. Works OK except I keep getting a nasty whitefly problem. I don't mind spraying my strictly ornamental tropical plants, but the veggies I try anything else, right now we *vacuum" the plants, suck the whiteflies right out of the air around them, keep em thinned down anyway, but I really need a better method. Outside plants though I have little problems, outside of this nasty sucky drought. for that this yeart we are using left over cardboard chick feeding trays, laid out in the raised beds, overlapped, then a hole chunked through them with a post hold digger and the veggie plants inserted. throw a little g
...with my cows as well. Been kicking this around now for awhile. Have some huge movable corral, encompassing a few acres or so.(ya, you need some good number of cows and big pastures for this to work) All the fence pieces on wheels. The whole thing is solar powered and crawls really slow, using GPS navigation to change areas they can really munch over. Well, ideally, initially I'd just use a diesel tractor once a day, drive up with a water tank on a trailer -a buffalo they are called-, refill the reservoir/watering thing that is attached on the inside, then attach the movable corral with another hitch on the back of the buffalo trailer, and drag it over another few acres. Instead of fencing the whole property, just use that, then all you need is just a little Y chute action to move out what ones you wanted to sell. Added bonus, you could run them over fresh mown hayfields and corn plots, let them eat the stubble. (I *hate* fencing and repairs and keeping them clean, seems a huge waste of time and resources when all you want to do is keep cows from escaping. I'd much rather just mow the perimeter than try and keep the fences from getting overgrown, and corral sections are better than fences anyway, sorta giant lincoln log deals made out of steel, go together easy) I guess you could have the chickens bring up the rear with an additional section, so they get dragged over the previous area. I know I could build a small one here to do that, but it wouldn't be practical size for me. I have enough spare corral sections and old junk axles and wheels etc to do one maybe-gee, not big, 1/4 acre maybe. I think it would be a neat project to do with a lot of solar panels and an electric motors and GPS and whatnot, get it as automated as possible. The only catch is watering, haven't worked that out yet on a big scale other than underground taps that automatically "dock" each day.
Mileage claims are only one part of the total economic picture. Another one is from the health angle from tons of cars with their engines constantly running stopped at traffic lights or creeping along at 2 miles an hour in traffic jams. Urban areas are big heat and pollution air traps, islands. This causes a LOT of long term expensive health problems, plus it actually hurts the trees and buildings themselves inside of cities. Hard to put an accurate financial number to it, but it is safe to assume it is a rather large number. Hybrids running in town on batteries with their ICE turned off help to mitigate this islanding effect to a large degree. So even if they have new reduced overall mileage figures, they still will be better than comparable mileage pure ICE machines because they don't contribute to the concentrated pollution islanding effect, something you are still paying for one way or the other (both really). And pure electrics will be better still, especially if they are being recharged using the cleaner renewable sources, such as solar and wind power, etc.
I think in time you might see entire chunks of major cities made off limits to pure ICE machines from this reason, no matter what mileage they get. That's a guess, but bet I'm right on that.
The concept is interesting (I have had two of them before), it is called the "chicken tractor" (googleable), or lightweight movable coop. You drag it over new areas of pasture/lawn every other day or so. As to their litter on the ground-a sprinker takes care of that easily, that and the ground insects-but in your case, sounds like none of the above is a much better idea. Other folks can do it though. There is no one size fits everyone urban or suburban "homesteading" scheme. A friend of mine really wanted a garden once, all he has was a second story tiny apartment with no authorized access to any of the grounds. The solution he did was a few small tomatoes and peppers in pots out on the roof!
Down in the trenches, the guys go "man, I hate this crap, why do we have to use it?". Up above, where corporate greed rules, they fully understand what Microsoft is and approve, it reinforces and legitimizes their own notions that they too should be able to utterly dominate whatever business they are in. They dig it, it's the same mindset. Want to see the cult members? The rich guys in the black suits who call all the shots, they are all in the cult of excessive greed. It's hardwired in their DNA. Everyone here remembers those kinds of kids back in gradeschool, there was always a few standouts, kids who no matter what just had to have everything, by whatever means possible.
Those kids grow up. Stupider ones get caught up in petty crimes, they become lower level predators, a lot of the smarter ones go into business to become one of those topdogs. Not to make a living, but to be able to dominate their surroundings. Business or politics (it's the same really), the ones who get to the top in the power structure *really* want and almost need to be there. and nothing that goes wrong is ever their fault-one of the power perqs of being dominate, and you are allowed to be batsquat crazy enough to believe it and not get called on it by society, because the other batsquat crazies are the ones in charge over there as well. See: history of wars and crazed rulers. Nations don't really go to war, a few crazies at the top get in a tiff with each other-but they call the shots because they are dominate and got into that position of power so all their herd animals must obey and "go to war".
MS and how they have always done business is an inspiration to these guys, they are champions to them, invincible. They think you can only get big or "be successful", by being the topdog, by being the most ruthless predator out there. Business is war to them, it's no rules combat, it's not just about making a living, all of them are WAY beyond being rich enough to survive and be most comfortable, so what's left? Power, dominance, never being satisfied, got to have more, more, MORE, and if you can't have it, you have to destroy what you can't have.
You're welcome! Eat your veggies and wash your hands! And those dastardly trees, brought us allergies and sneezing from pollen, and forest fires! Get rid of them! And fish! Dang sharks bite surfboarders! Out! Stupid nature, always being there and all, not clean and pure like a nice video game console and virtual reality!
You can go back to downloading your food off the intartubes now, must be really tasty!
chicken wire fences do a good job of keeping the little guys where they belong. Added bonus, less lawn to actually have to mow, they'll keep it scratched up good.
I think it is more cultural. In other places around the world having your own small flock is considered quite normal and practical. In rural US it is still quite common. In suburbia much less so, I was just pointing out a small flock is still quite doable, merely a step from having your own vegetable garden for instance. A lot of folks in suburbia don't have a garden, a lot do. A little coop can be built on the back of the garage for instance, and a small run enclosed. And by "suburbia" I guess I would have to quantify, a house with a yard big enough so that projects like this are at least theoretically possible. And by small flock I guess that would be say less than a dozen birds.
Completely valid but perhaps not insurmountable points. Getting some kid to come over and feed and water the birds for a week doesn't seem all that hard-of course maybe I am out of touch with modern micro suburban economics. Maybe the kids get so much allowance nowadays a small part timer is a non event and not needed for their income needs. If you really had to because of vacation and no tenders -CHOP- in the freezer, get a new flock when you come back. Cluckeraptors grow quickly,and laying birds can be got for a pittance, all mine were free for the taking (leftovers after commercial flock catching, escapees in other words).
As to the zoning laws, yes, but really just way too varied to be able to say there is a general consensus. Most places allow *some* from what I understand, although the practice isn't common. And one can always apply for a variance at the usually grossly under visited county council meetings. If the diff is 2 to 6 birds and you have a decent set of plans for your discrete coop, most likely they might cut you some slack. If not, oh well. I always thought the entire idea of suburban living was to combine some of the advantages of heavy urban living with the rural, if one or the other isn't present, pick another suburban area perhaps, there are *millions* of them to choose from. Just generally speaking o course, not in any way particular to your personal area. I know it is a prime consideration of mine where I live, right up at the top, can I "do stuff" I like to do without being harassed by over zealous government or home owners associations, etc. Personally I would never live someplace that said I couldn't have a dish or a large backyard garden or work on the car out in the drive, etc. Some folks like that strict structure, but I sure don't.
That and other reasons make it a spiffy idea to always locate in unincorporated areas of a county, usually much more lax on the things you want to do hobby wise and usually cheaper to live than perhaps just a mile away into the incorporated city area.
I bag mine up, feed it to my chickens (so far a lot of really good eggs, pretty soon some freezer meat) or use it for mulch around my little trees or grapevines, etc. The chickens *love* grass clippings, scarf em down quick. A lot of folks in suburbia could do the same thing, they just don't feel like it or somehow think it's "weird" or something, even though caring for a small kitchen flock has been something humans have done for the bulk of our civilized existence.. A small flock is remarkably easy to care for too, and doesn't have to be any sort of huge mess or "eyesore", kinda fun really. And they can be housed in a sharp looking and relatively inexpensive to build (plans galore on the net) coop, then allowed a little walk around the lawn "free range" time during the day.
...but as to some great flood, it's the one thing almost all ancient cultures recorded as happening. I find that just a bit beyond normal coincidence. Some details vary culture to culture obviously, but not the raw basic idea. Some time in the past there was a shedload more water in a fast time period, and flooded most everything important to humans out, especially all the folks who lived near coasts and river mouths-where the effects would have been much greater, and where a lot of ancient civilization was created and flourished. Even today, some huge part of humanity lives within short distances -say 200 miles or less- of an ocean or large river system, and a lot of very important large cities are on coasts and large rivers. What could have caused such a flood, I don't know, massive underwater vulcanism or quakes leading to huge tsunamis then some altered weather as so much more water vapor got dumped into the sky causing serious long term heavy rains-maybe something like that, but these flood stories are in our collective human records. Just recently they came up with evidence showing that the north sea used to be dry plains and was inhabited by humans, now it is all underwater. So who knows. All these cultures went to a lot of trouble to try and make sure that story got preserved, it must have made a pretty large impact on the survivors.
The actual complex machines that *play* CDs have dropped down to now you can get a new small one portable for like $9.99 or something, it certainly didn't double or triple in price. Shoot, portable video DVD players are like 50 bucks now.
Nope, plastic disks with digital bits on them are being sold at tremendous cartel inflated hyper-gouging prices. And everyone and their cousin leroy knows that, hence why so little respect for the MAFIAA dons and their last century business models. The music and movie industries could make a lot more money and just elimnate all the DRM customer annoyances by just being realistic on prices, two bucks for a music CD, 3 bucks for a video DVD. Make them be impulse item priced, and people would by and large not even bother with downloading any more, and if they had continually dropped prices as tech advances allowed them, they could have about stopped so called "piracy" before it even got real popular. People by and large just hate to be price gouged, they lose all respect for the other side and act accordingly. The industry should look at lower per unit gross, but over all higher net by really upping volume of sales by DROPPING PRICES RADICALLY.
The doofuses who make the final pricing decisions on entertainment cartel distributed CDs and DVDs are mostly multi zillionaires who live in extremely expensive areas of the country and to them 20 bucks is chump change, nothing, like a quarter in your pocket or something, they *think* it's a cheap price, because they have no practical frame of reference compared to most people. Median US *household* income is 46 thousand bucks, it isn't $460,000 or one million 460,000 or ten million 460,000, which is what those media dons make, some huge a$$ lotta money. They have *no* practical frame of reference on pricing. They just can't relate. That's the main thing they just don't grok, which causes all the problems, and why they bribe off congress and whatnot to legislate in their business model. They just don't get it why their sales are dropping. And it's just plain stupid, they could probably make a lot more money just by being a little more realistic on retail pricing and going for a big push on volume sales.
FWIW, if you have some leet home engineering skills for moving heavy objects, check out industrial electric forklift battery packs instead of going for the option of "solar" batteries. You'll get a lot more stored juice for the buck that way. Wherever you buy them from most likely can load the thing into your truck, at home, different story. I'd suggest renting a truck with a *stout* lift gate on the back (check load ratings on the liftgate, if not sufficient, you'll just have to deal with a normal truck bed), then perhaps renting an engine hoist and some good piano dollies, etc. Build your vented battery box first, after you have the correct dimensions of course, and maybe leave the front plate off, install the heavy steel battery pack, then screw and glue the front panel on (might be one option unless you opt for the forklift or heavy engine hoist). Maybe, cobjob to your level of expertise. They are heavy mambos, and you can get them at 12 to 48 VDC. If you've never seen one, wait until you see the busbars on them, the series connectors, solid bars welded to the terminals. They are *serious* battery packs, built for rugged use. They are deep single cells inside a steel box, with an open top, with lift holes on the side for attaching the lifting chains. Or even just rent a small forklift for that moving-in day. A lot of folks on a budget have used them in solar installs, work great. And *always* use distilled water to top them off.
..what a lot of folks with solar systems do. They try to keep the battery banks topped off, plus run their heavy usage stuff in mid day. If they need additional from the grid they pull it in at nighttime and try to get cheaper rates then.
With solar you have to work both ways-keep trying to drop demand,(insulate way beyond normal, get only ultra energy efficient appliances, be sane about turning things on and off, etc) as you add to your own production (solar scales, you can start smallish and add to it as you can). Eventually those two lines would cross on a graph and you have become energy independent.
They'd look at your code, see you were prone to x,y,z and not give you coverage for that. That's what they want to do, because it is around the only way they can remain profitable. And they would all do it if it wasn't outlawed, and outlawing it will kill off the industry pretty quick, a really serious catch 22..
What would happen is when you got affliction x,y or z, because you were prone to it, you'd have no coverage. You'd still be paying, but what you were most likely paying to be able to be covered for would *not* be covered, and NO, some other insurance company wouldn't cover it, they'd be total insane retards to do that and would go out of business soon. Well, perhaps they would, but your premiums would be out of this world.
ex-ah & l guy here, looked at the actuarial tables a lot, know how they function and how they think in those companies. They are in the business of taking your cash, and dropping the odds in their favor that they would have to shell any out. The old days of "pooling resources" to cover risks are way over, medical costs now are just way too high. They take your cash and then invest it, your (everyone "your's" in the coverage plan) premium payments barely cover sales commission and office expenses, they do NOT cover claims, not even close. It's roughly akin economically to magazine or newspaper subscriptions, your payment doesn't make them any money, barely covers costs, the ads make them their money.
If the insurance companies were forced to cover pre existing conditions-which a genetic defect would be, they would just close shop, go bankrupt, go do something else. It'll happen too, eventually, only the most rich will have private coverage. If you notice, a lot of these companies are stopping (or trying to curtail or stop) covering hurricanes and houses-it just doesn't pay, and living in a flimsy house on the coast is a "pre existing condition". The ones that are maintaining coverage are upping rates considerably and really giving a critical eye to how things are built. They haven't even come close to paying off the katrina and rita claims yet, tons are still under litigation. One more category 5 and kiss that action good bye, won't be a one of them cover homes on the coast unless the yearly premium is a huge chunk of the assessed value.
Same thing would happen if they are forced to cover genetic pre existing FUBARs. there is no cheap "market work around" for that, it is un-possible to charge enough premium to cover hundreds of thousands of probable expenses.
And that's why rates are so high now, they are trying to do that, and even with rate increases costs are still going up faster. It is going to implode some time and crash, inevitable now.
Of course congress will vote against it, make it illegal, etc, all it will do is prolong them going out of business. A politician would be defeated next election if he voted against it, they aren't stupid, but that won't change economic reality either.
The only way to avoid this is to outlaw the tests completely, literally ban them. and even that would only prolong the length of time that medical insurers are around, costs are just too high now.
certainly seems cheap enough for a backup internet connection. I was on a local wireless high speed net deal, then another company moved in, now those of us in the overlapping areas get squat, they conflict with each other,so I had to go back to dialup and landline. BUT, I have a verizon cell account, I think I just might switch to t-mobile and get a sidekick with the data plan. redundancy is a good deal.
Thanks. Seems like it is worth looking into anyway, seeing as how cell phones in general have become so necessary, and it's only a few bucks more for the data plan.
As to dialup speeds, heck, that's what I'm using now!
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I think you'd see a tech explosion with or without patents once populations reach a huge critical mass. The combination of a lot more genetic variances and chances for genius to arise combined with exchange of ideas. Humans are just naturally inquisitive and want to see better ways of "doing stuff". Once we got just a little bit beyond a mostly agrarian society people had more free time to invent and experiment. If patents were totally eliminated I still think you'd see humans building/creating/constructing. Just our nature to do so. What that would do to business I don't know, but we'd still see a lot of innovation, IMO. The bottom line is business comes after the creative urge, not before, in most cases. Real innovators do it because they want to. Here's an example from my own life. Back in the 70s I was doing a lot of off road bicycling,because it was fun,and I really wanted a fat tired multi speed bike, the skinny tired bikes had too many flats and dented rims, etc to be practical, and the fat tired single speeds didn't cut it to climb hills and go across soft ground easily, etc,-so I hand built one, and it worked quite well. Eventually these sorts of bikes began to be sold as "mountain bikes". There were a lot of guys at the same time period thinking and doing similar, and I bet all of them just wanted that sort of bike because it filled an unfilled niche at the time. Business came later. Urge to have something cool that didn't exist at the time came first. Patents had nothing to do with that urge or development at the time.
What do you think of the work being down using algae now? There's two directions,. algae to hydrogen and biodiesel from algae.
..they just keep passing more laws! heh heh heh
Actually since the 60's it is still way higher, like 3 times. There's been a temporary drop in *some* crime in *some* areas because of population demographics, ie, less young males in their teens and 20s in some areas, which is the closest corollary to crime in general terms. There's also been an increase in really violent crimes since a lot of states passed 2-3 strikes and you are out laws. Habitual violators find it more convenient to not leave witnesses in other words.
with that said, the purpose of the police state and all the new cameras and whatnot we talk about is to protect the rulers and their rule. It has nothing to do with fighting street crime. They sell the police state idea that way, they are going to "get tough on crime" and "terrorism", etc, but really it is to protect the elite as we transition back to a feudalistic two class society model, "technofeudalism", which is the globalists' long range plan.
...it is for the protection and convenience and *profit* of "Big Brother". When you look at it from that point of view, everything they do makes more sense.
Geeks are early adopters of new and unusual technology, as such, the early providers to the geeks can sometimes get quite rich. For just one example, who bought all the earliest computers and computer games? Who bought digital watches, or "transistor" radios?
I remember all that stuff as well, along with no school massacres (no forced drugging of kids either), no random checkpoints to stop at, no security cameras, etc. Money was still ..money! Change was real silver and the paper notes were backed by silver. One of my grandmothers still had an icebox and some guy with a horse and wagon delivered the ice. The only place I saw Air Conditioning was at the movies, and it was a big deal, they advertised that as much as the movie title, and a ticket cost a quarter and there were cartoons before the movies, and sometimes those little news trailers. I even remember a 5 cent phone call, although that switched to a dime when I was still a kid,, but I made a few at a nickle.
Ya, no way to predict the future, but I will give it a SWAG anyway (this is where it gets sucky, but I'll call it like I see it).....50 years from now humans will be lucky to have that level technology that we remember as kids, because of the resource wars that will happen and from biological advances being used extensively in warfare. Forget nukes, it's the biobugs that will do in most humans, that and the accidents from "civilian" genetical modding of plants and animals.
Every technology ever invented by man has suffered bad mistakes, crashes, bugs, snafus and whatnot, but doing it with self replicating live organisms will prove to be disastrous when the accidents occur. Our collective arrogance will be the deciding factor "it's just science, stop being a luddite, nothing bad will happen-trust us!"
uh huh, yep...sure
As much as I really like all tech, I know the bad biological accidents and mistakes and on-purpose advanced weapons are coming. As will the 8 billion humans on a one billion human sized planet. Stuff's gonna happen.
Getting set to install some more water tanks in the greenhouse for fish,. and for a place for the baby ducks I'm getting this week to hang out until they get bigger. We have two little ponds in there already, but just pretty tropical fish in them. One is around 25 gallons, the other is around 400 gallons. I have some black water barrels in there already for winter heat, but dumping them out and refilling them with sand, this afternoon actually, as we have a ton of sand outside for mortar work and I need to move it out of the way. (I go in and out and do projects, jump on the net when I am inside, outside work in the heat can be nasty for neogeexzers...) The next water tanks are commercial tanks, about 60 or so gallons apiece, and I have a solar powered fountain for them to provide aeration. I think I'm going to go to bluegills though, take the heat better and I'm going to build a grasshopper 'trawl net' to work the fields with and feed those to the bluegills. In the winter I'll switch to trout, feed them minnows or crickets most likely, something I can raise inside the greenhouse better (it's 24 feet by 70 odd feet, a used commercial one we got, lotsa room for all sorts of projects, boss got it used for a grand, with us tearing it down, quite the deal really)
Mostly I try to make do with scrap stuff kicking around the farm, everything I do has to be low budget, heh.
Ya, we need more action at technocrat, c'mon over! Plenty of good articles and conversations going on. And submit your own! Real nice to have a "no troll zone" tech board.
Hmm, maybe I'll mix the tilapia with the bluegills to eat the algae, it sure does grow fast in the greenhouse. the tropical tanks I have to use chemical to keep them clean. I tried sterile white amur to eat the algae, but the dang things kept committing fishicide by jumping out of the tank, and heavy screening the top of the "pretty" ponds defeats the whole purpose. I made the mistake though of putting some minnows from the creek in there, one was a sunfish or bluegill, ATE a buncha my expensive fish, the rascal. Like around 200 clams worth. Lot of water plants in there, one day I notice "hey, where all my fish go, ain't seen 'em for awhile now...hmmmm?", then I see this fat bluegill swimming around! sheesh.
ya, I've been juiced about it for awhile now,. I might build the small scale one to show the boss. Other farms/ranches where I have worked we always disk harrowed the fields to break up the pies, but he doesn't want me to do that for some reason, thinks it will kill the grass or something.
I can throw a couple of the older calves in there maybe, and have the chicken coop trail it. then just use some old riding lawnmower and keep it attached to it all the time, you wouldn't need much to drag a small one if the wheels were gooe enough. I don't have any center irrigation stuff to try the other thing though, but that's sorta a neat idea as well, but you'd have to do something with the land the arc doesn't touch. I guess you could just hay there.
Farming is neat, all sorts of wild stuff you can try. Once I invented (but never built yet) what I called vertically integrated aquaculture, something like you were saying the chinese do. You overload the system at the cheap end, so you can harvest at the expensive end. I spent weeks on the design and tried to shop it around, no dice, to farmers I was just a young dumb hippy. Meh. Another time I did a nice interplanted crop, corn and pole beans, tried to get some farmers who did massive silage to even come up and just *look* at it, no dice. They'd rather buy in the protein or something. Corn they understand, beans they understand, but for some reason they think you can't grow them together, even though it works amazingly well, and for silage, who cares, you put it up wet anyway..
If it ain't in the agco magazines, it don't exist or it is "hippy/enviro" stuff which is cuss words to them. Amazing how many of them are so brainwashed. It's starting to change a little, especially with alternative energy, a friend of mine makes a darn good living selling and installing mostly solar water pumps to keep remote stock tanks filled.
I get to do some neat stuff here, my boss is only half way brainwashed because he's a successful inventor (some of his stuff is in about all the broiler houses out there, a chick feed system for instance) and understands that out of the box thinking might work, he'll at least listen to my wild a$$ ideas, heh. I got one we might do this fall, I got some wheat last year on my nickle and overseeded some hillsides where I thinned it out, wanted to show him it only needs some grass to hide in to sprout, that it doesn't need to be drilled in. Well, it's up and lush now, big fat protein rich seed heads,and he's impressed, he's looking into doing all our pastures next fall though, but he's running it by some of his friends who grow wheat on a big scale. Right now my cluckeraptors get grazed in one little pasture I overseeded with wheat and oats. They are just starting to "get it" on grazing,(they are all rescue birds from total inside a chicken house living, some the hybrid broilers, others are the breeders/layers for the hybrid broilers and I have some pure jersey black giants on order now, should be in soon) I have been gradually reducing their commercial feed and forcing them to graze and scratch more, seems to be working. Had to start them out with the lawn clippings, eventually one ate it, then another then another, etc. it's still a stretch to get them to really attack tall grass though.
We are doing a lot of veggies in a greenhouse, using "earthboxes", you can look those up. We are already eating squash and strawberries and stuff. Works OK except I keep getting a nasty whitefly problem. I don't mind spraying my strictly ornamental tropical plants, but the veggies I try anything else, right now we *vacuum" the plants, suck the whiteflies right out of the air around them, keep em thinned down anyway, but I really need a better method. Outside plants though I have little problems, outside of this nasty sucky drought. for that this yeart we are using left over cardboard chick feeding trays, laid out in the raised beds, overlapped, then a hole chunked through them with a post hold digger and the veggie plants inserted. throw a little g
...with my cows as well. Been kicking this around now for awhile. Have some huge movable corral, encompassing a few acres or so.(ya, you need some good number of cows and big pastures for this to work) All the fence pieces on wheels. The whole thing is solar powered and crawls really slow, using GPS navigation to change areas they can really munch over. Well, ideally, initially I'd just use a diesel tractor once a day, drive up with a water tank on a trailer -a buffalo they are called-, refill the reservoir/watering thing that is attached on the inside, then attach the movable corral with another hitch on the back of the buffalo trailer, and drag it over another few acres. Instead of fencing the whole property, just use that, then all you need is just a little Y chute action to move out what ones you wanted to sell. Added bonus, you could run them over fresh mown hayfields and corn plots, let them eat the stubble. (I *hate* fencing and repairs and keeping them clean, seems a huge waste of time and resources when all you want to do is keep cows from escaping. I'd much rather just mow the perimeter than try and keep the fences from getting overgrown, and corral sections are better than fences anyway, sorta giant lincoln log deals made out of steel, go together easy) I guess you could have the chickens bring up the rear with an additional section, so they get dragged over the previous area. I know I could build a small one here to do that, but it wouldn't be practical size for me. I have enough spare corral sections and old junk axles and wheels etc to do one maybe-gee, not big, 1/4 acre maybe. I think it would be a neat project to do with a lot of solar panels and an electric motors and GPS and whatnot, get it as automated as possible. The only catch is watering, haven't worked that out yet on a big scale other than underground taps that automatically "dock" each day.
Mileage claims are only one part of the total economic picture. Another one is from the health angle from tons of cars with their engines constantly running stopped at traffic lights or creeping along at 2 miles an hour in traffic jams. Urban areas are big heat and pollution air traps, islands. This causes a LOT of long term expensive health problems, plus it actually hurts the trees and buildings themselves inside of cities. Hard to put an accurate financial number to it, but it is safe to assume it is a rather large number. Hybrids running in town on batteries with their ICE turned off help to mitigate this islanding effect to a large degree. So even if they have new reduced overall mileage figures, they still will be better than comparable mileage pure ICE machines because they don't contribute to the concentrated pollution islanding effect, something you are still paying for one way or the other (both really). And pure electrics will be better still, especially if they are being recharged using the cleaner renewable sources, such as solar and wind power, etc.
I think in time you might see entire chunks of major cities made off limits to pure ICE machines from this reason, no matter what mileage they get. That's a guess, but bet I'm right on that.
The concept is interesting (I have had two of them before), it is called the "chicken tractor" (googleable), or lightweight movable coop. You drag it over new areas of pasture/lawn every other day or so. As to their litter on the ground-a sprinker takes care of that easily, that and the ground insects-but in your case, sounds like none of the above is a much better idea. Other folks can do it though. There is no one size fits everyone urban or suburban "homesteading" scheme. A friend of mine really wanted a garden once, all he has was a second story tiny apartment with no authorized access to any of the grounds. The solution he did was a few small tomatoes and peppers in pots out on the roof!
Down in the trenches, the guys go "man, I hate this crap, why do we have to use it?". Up above, where corporate greed rules, they fully understand what Microsoft is and approve, it reinforces and legitimizes their own notions that they too should be able to utterly dominate whatever business they are in. They dig it, it's the same mindset. Want to see the cult members? The rich guys in the black suits who call all the shots, they are all in the cult of excessive greed. It's hardwired in their DNA. Everyone here remembers those kinds of kids back in gradeschool, there was always a few standouts, kids who no matter what just had to have everything, by whatever means possible.
Those kids grow up. Stupider ones get caught up in petty crimes, they become lower level predators, a lot of the smarter ones go into business to become one of those topdogs. Not to make a living, but to be able to dominate their surroundings. Business or politics (it's the same really), the ones who get to the top in the power structure *really* want and almost need to be there. and nothing that goes wrong is ever their fault-one of the power perqs of being dominate, and you are allowed to be batsquat crazy enough to believe it and not get called on it by society, because the other batsquat crazies are the ones in charge over there as well. See: history of wars and crazed rulers. Nations don't really go to war, a few crazies at the top get in a tiff with each other-but they call the shots because they are dominate and got into that position of power so all their herd animals must obey and "go to war".
MS and how they have always done business is an inspiration to these guys, they are champions to them, invincible. They think you can only get big or "be successful", by being the topdog, by being the most ruthless predator out there. Business is war to them, it's no rules combat, it's not just about making a living, all of them are WAY beyond being rich enough to survive and be most comfortable, so what's left? Power, dominance, never being satisfied, got to have more, more, MORE, and if you can't have it, you have to destroy what you can't have.
You're welcome! Eat your veggies and wash your hands! And those dastardly trees, brought us allergies and sneezing from pollen, and forest fires! Get rid of them! And fish! Dang sharks bite surfboarders! Out! Stupid nature, always being there and all, not clean and pure like a nice video game console and virtual reality!
You can go back to downloading your food off the intartubes now, must be really tasty!
chicken wire fences do a good job of keeping the little guys where they belong. Added bonus, less lawn to actually have to mow, they'll keep it scratched up good.
I think it is more cultural. In other places around the world having your own small flock is considered quite normal and practical. In rural US it is still quite common. In suburbia much less so, I was just pointing out a small flock is still quite doable, merely a step from having your own vegetable garden for instance. A lot of folks in suburbia don't have a garden, a lot do. A little coop can be built on the back of the garage for instance, and a small run enclosed. And by "suburbia" I guess I would have to quantify, a house with a yard big enough so that projects like this are at least theoretically possible. And by small flock I guess that would be say less than a dozen birds.
Completely valid but perhaps not insurmountable points. Getting some kid to come over and feed and water the birds for a week doesn't seem all that hard-of course maybe I am out of touch with modern micro suburban economics. Maybe the kids get so much allowance nowadays a small part timer is a non event and not needed for their income needs. If you really had to because of vacation and no tenders -CHOP- in the freezer, get a new flock when you come back. Cluckeraptors grow quickly,and laying birds can be got for a pittance, all mine were free for the taking (leftovers after commercial flock catching, escapees in other words).
As to the zoning laws, yes, but really just way too varied to be able to say there is a general consensus. Most places allow *some* from what I understand, although the practice isn't common. And one can always apply for a variance at the usually grossly under visited county council meetings. If the diff is 2 to 6 birds and you have a decent set of plans for your discrete coop, most likely they might cut you some slack. If not, oh well. I always thought the entire idea of suburban living was to combine some of the advantages of heavy urban living with the rural, if one or the other isn't present, pick another suburban area perhaps, there are *millions* of them to choose from. Just generally speaking o course, not in any way particular to your personal area. I know it is a prime consideration of mine where I live, right up at the top, can I "do stuff" I like to do without being harassed by over zealous government or home owners associations, etc. Personally I would never live someplace that said I couldn't have a dish or a large backyard garden or work on the car out in the drive, etc. Some folks like that strict structure, but I sure don't.
That and other reasons make it a spiffy idea to always locate in unincorporated areas of a county, usually much more lax on the things you want to do hobby wise and usually cheaper to live than perhaps just a mile away into the incorporated city area.
I bag mine up, feed it to my chickens (so far a lot of really good eggs, pretty soon some freezer meat) or use it for mulch around my little trees or grapevines, etc. The chickens *love* grass clippings, scarf em down quick. A lot of folks in suburbia could do the same thing, they just don't feel like it or somehow think it's "weird" or something, even though caring for a small kitchen flock has been something humans have done for the bulk of our civilized existence.. A small flock is remarkably easy to care for too, and doesn't have to be any sort of huge mess or "eyesore", kinda fun really. And they can be housed in a sharp looking and relatively inexpensive to build (plans galore on the net) coop, then allowed a little walk around the lawn "free range" time during the day.
About the coolest simplest thing I have learned in a long time!
...but as to some great flood, it's the one thing almost all ancient cultures recorded as happening. I find that just a bit beyond normal coincidence. Some details vary culture to culture obviously, but not the raw basic idea. Some time in the past there was a shedload more water in a fast time period, and flooded most everything important to humans out, especially all the folks who lived near coasts and river mouths-where the effects would have been much greater, and where a lot of ancient civilization was created and flourished. Even today, some huge part of humanity lives within short distances -say 200 miles or less- of an ocean or large river system, and a lot of very important large cities are on coasts and large rivers. What could have caused such a flood, I don't know, massive underwater vulcanism or quakes leading to huge tsunamis then some altered weather as so much more water vapor got dumped into the sky causing serious long term heavy rains-maybe something like that, but these flood stories are in our collective human records. Just recently they came up with evidence showing that the north sea used to be dry plains and was inhabited by humans, now it is all underwater. So who knows. All these cultures went to a lot of trouble to try and make sure that story got preserved, it must have made a pretty large impact on the survivors.
The actual complex machines that *play* CDs have dropped down to now you can get a new small one portable for like $9.99 or something, it certainly didn't double or triple in price. Shoot, portable video DVD players are like 50 bucks now.
Nope, plastic disks with digital bits on them are being sold at tremendous cartel inflated hyper-gouging prices. And everyone and their cousin leroy knows that, hence why so little respect for the MAFIAA dons and their last century business models. The music and movie industries could make a lot more money and just elimnate all the DRM customer annoyances by just being realistic on prices, two bucks for a music CD, 3 bucks for a video DVD. Make them be impulse item priced, and people would by and large not even bother with downloading any more, and if they had continually dropped prices as tech advances allowed them, they could have about stopped so called "piracy" before it even got real popular. People by and large just hate to be price gouged, they lose all respect for the other side and act accordingly. The industry should look at lower per unit gross, but over all higher net by really upping volume of sales by DROPPING PRICES RADICALLY.
The doofuses who make the final pricing decisions on entertainment cartel distributed CDs and DVDs are mostly multi zillionaires who live in extremely expensive areas of the country and to them 20 bucks is chump change, nothing, like a quarter in your pocket or something, they *think* it's a cheap price, because they have no practical frame of reference compared to most people. Median US *household* income is 46 thousand bucks, it isn't $460,000 or one million 460,000 or ten million 460,000, which is what those media dons make, some huge a$$ lotta money. They have *no* practical frame of reference on pricing. They just can't relate. That's the main thing they just don't grok, which causes all the problems, and why they bribe off congress and whatnot to legislate in their business model. They just don't get it why their sales are dropping. And it's just plain stupid, they could probably make a lot more money just by being a little more realistic on retail pricing and going for a big push on volume sales.
FWIW, if you have some leet home engineering skills for moving heavy objects, check out industrial electric forklift battery packs instead of going for the option of "solar" batteries. You'll get a lot more stored juice for the buck that way. Wherever you buy them from most likely can load the thing into your truck, at home, different story. I'd suggest renting a truck with a *stout* lift gate on the back (check load ratings on the liftgate, if not sufficient, you'll just have to deal with a normal truck bed), then perhaps renting an engine hoist and some good piano dollies, etc. Build your vented battery box first, after you have the correct dimensions of course, and maybe leave the front plate off, install the heavy steel battery pack, then screw and glue the front panel on (might be one option unless you opt for the forklift or heavy engine hoist). Maybe, cobjob to your level of expertise. They are heavy mambos, and you can get them at 12 to 48 VDC. If you've never seen one, wait until you see the busbars on them, the series connectors, solid bars welded to the terminals. They are *serious* battery packs, built for rugged use. They are deep single cells inside a steel box, with an open top, with lift holes on the side for attaching the lifting chains. Or even just rent a small forklift for that moving-in day. A lot of folks on a budget have used them in solar installs, work great. And *always* use distilled water to top them off.
..what a lot of folks with solar systems do. They try to keep the battery banks topped off, plus run their heavy usage stuff in mid day. If they need additional from the grid they pull it in at nighttime and try to get cheaper rates then.
With solar you have to work both ways-keep trying to drop demand,(insulate way beyond normal, get only ultra energy efficient appliances, be sane about turning things on and off, etc) as you add to your own production (solar scales, you can start smallish and add to it as you can). Eventually those two lines would cross on a graph and you have become energy independent.
They'd look at your code, see you were prone to x,y,z and not give you coverage for that. That's what they want to do, because it is around the only way they can remain profitable. And they would all do it if it wasn't outlawed, and outlawing it will kill off the industry pretty quick, a really serious catch 22..
What would happen is when you got affliction x,y or z, because you were prone to it, you'd have no coverage. You'd still be paying, but what you were most likely paying to be able to be covered for would *not* be covered, and NO, some other insurance company wouldn't cover it, they'd be total insane retards to do that and would go out of business soon. Well, perhaps they would, but your premiums would be out of this world.
ex-ah & l guy here, looked at the actuarial tables a lot, know how they function and how they think in those companies. They are in the business of taking your cash, and dropping the odds in their favor that they would have to shell any out. The old days of "pooling resources" to cover risks are way over, medical costs now are just way too high. They take your cash and then invest it, your (everyone "your's" in the coverage plan) premium payments barely cover sales commission and office expenses, they do NOT cover claims, not even close. It's roughly akin economically to magazine or newspaper subscriptions, your payment doesn't make them any money, barely covers costs, the ads make them their money.
If the insurance companies were forced to cover pre existing conditions-which a genetic defect would be, they would just close shop, go bankrupt, go do something else. It'll happen too, eventually, only the most rich will have private coverage. If you notice, a lot of these companies are stopping (or trying to curtail or stop) covering hurricanes and houses-it just doesn't pay, and living in a flimsy house on the coast is a "pre existing condition". The ones that are maintaining coverage are upping rates considerably and really giving a critical eye to how things are built. They haven't even come close to paying off the katrina and rita claims yet, tons are still under litigation. One more category 5 and kiss that action good bye, won't be a one of them cover homes on the coast unless the yearly premium is a huge chunk of the assessed value.
Same thing would happen if they are forced to cover genetic pre existing FUBARs. there is no cheap "market work around" for that, it is un-possible to charge enough premium to cover hundreds of thousands of probable expenses.
And that's why rates are so high now, they are trying to do that, and even with rate increases costs are still going up faster. It is going to implode some time and crash, inevitable now.
Of course congress will vote against it, make it illegal, etc, all it will do is prolong them going out of business. A politician would be defeated next election if he voted against it, they aren't stupid, but that won't change economic reality either.
The only way to avoid this is to outlaw the tests completely, literally ban them. and even that would only prolong the length of time that medical insurers are around, costs are just too high now.
certainly seems cheap enough for a backup internet connection. I was on a local wireless high speed net deal, then another company moved in, now those of us in the overlapping areas get squat, they conflict with each other,so I had to go back to dialup and landline. BUT, I have a verizon cell account, I think I just might switch to t-mobile and get a sidekick with the data plan. redundancy is a good deal.
Thanks. Seems like it is worth looking into anyway, seeing as how cell phones in general have become so necessary, and it's only a few bucks more for the data plan.
As to dialup speeds, heck, that's what I'm using now!
How is the web browser on the sidekick, what kind of speeds do you get, and is it really unlimited data like they say on their website?
thanks in advance.