My God! There are two of me! When I got married (omg...7 years ago!) we decided we didnt have the money for a TV. After a couple of weeks, we decided we did not miss it in the least. (Of course, we were busy with "other things" at the time too...)
You've never been sailing, have you? In the fog... Try it some time - you might suddenly get to appreciate the advantages of accuracy
Tell me something...why do you think that the Coast Gaurd provides a free differential beacon? Could it be because you need something to make GPS more accurate than it is with Selective Availability? No...that could not be it. If you are sailing around, relying on nothing but a GPS reciever without differential correction to figure out where you are and where you are going, then you deserve to run aground.
Or you could try flying - in poor viz
Next time you are in your airplane flying around in poor visibility, you might notice that there are numerous round gauges and dials there in front of you in the cockpit. Theses are called instruments, and by reading them correctly, you will be able to figure out where you are going. In visibilty that is so poor that you cannot look out and see the world around you, you will be operating under instrument flight rules, or IFR. Hope you are certified for IFR flight. It is interesting to note that IFR has existed much longer than GPS, and in fact a GPS reciever is not one of the instruments that your craft must posess in order to operate under IFR.
My whole point is that people that need accuracy have it now, and will continue to have it. Its just not free.
While the subset of people that need high accuracy maybe small, that doesn't mean they're not economically significant
Certainly I would agree with what you say. I am fairly familliar with paying surveying bills, so lessening them would be a help. However surveyors will not be using handheld Garmins to do their work anytime soon. (Indeed, I do not believe that GPS data is valid for a legal survey)
I suppose that the intent of my original post was twofold.
One, to ask the honest question of why would Joe/Jane Average need 5cm accuracy from a GPS device. I must confess ignorance on this. (Although I am learning, I have been refered to
geochaching twice now.) While Selective Availability might be problematic for that, it is certainly not the end of the world.
And two, to state that people that require accuracy will not be affected by the reinstatement of Selective Availablity. WAAS, the Coast Gaurd, and others provide differential signals to get GPS recievers into the sub-meter accuracy range, and since these systems were created under SA in the first place, they should be unaffected. Indeed, as I saw on this link (I think) that was posted with the comments on the original story, there are methods of using the military's own encrypted differential signals to increase accuracy, and I doubt the military is going to fool with their differential signals anytime soon. I suppose I should turn off the blockquote now...
As an aside, while I never surveyed for a profession, I did learn (kinda) how to do it back in college. I always thought it would be rather fun to go find the "iron pin located 2 chains NW of a big oak tree" that was driven there 150 years ago or so....I am sure that if I did that for a living, I would find that quite dull.
In summary, I fear that I did not express myself properly in my original post. It is not the first time, I fear. (as hard as that is to believe!)
You are correct. In fact, I had no idea that there was any such thing as geochacheing until this very moment. From visiting the website, it would appear that it is supposed to be at least somewhat difficult? Thusly, less accuracy should make for more fun?
In all seriousness, it says much for the state of humanity when we can engage in such things due to the availabilty of free time. We're not so bad off after all I suppose. (Not that I begrudge geocachers, I do stupid things with my freetime as well.....like read/. )
Perhaps I just don't get it, but I am having trouble figuring out why anyone (outside of a small subset of the population) would need accuracy less than 50 feet or so. I suspect people that really need accuracy greater than this currently have the tools to achieve such accuracy. It's not like most people are letting their GPS device drive their vehicles or something. Plus for people that need better accuracy, there are means by which to get it, depending on how much you want to spend.
But, as I said earlier, perhaps I just don't get it....
another kind of bacteria--Campylobacter--may build up resistance to these drugs. And that's the root of the problem.
People who consume chicken or turkey contaminated with fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter are at risk of becoming infected with a bacteria that current drugs can't easily kill. Campylobacter is the most common bacterial cause of diarrheal illness in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's estimated to affect over 2 million persons every year, or 1 percent of the population.
Campylobacter may build up a resistance. Mind you, no one has proven this to be the case. Indeed, along with being the most common cause of bacterial diarrhea, it is also one of the most common bacteria period. I am fairly certain that we could pull bacterial cultures from various areas in your home and find that campylobacter is present, and even fluoroquinolone resistant strains, even if there has never been a piece of chicken meat in your home. While this bacteria may affect over 2 million people each year, this is not the same as 2 million people being affected because they have consumed resistant bacterial strains that were contained in poultry that consumed antibiotics. (As the press release would want people to believe) This release is just for the purpose of spreading the FUD
This is not to say that antibiotics should be fed to animals as a matter of course, certainly they should not. This is only to say that there is not one documented case of resistant bacteria being caused by animal production.
Well, gee, that's why I said "with proper isolation", which includes supervision
Alas, the chances of proper supervision with proper isolation happening are very nearly zero. Furthermore, they will continue to be so as long as the medical field is told what to do by the medical insurance companies. (i.e. the insurance company decides that they will pay amount $X for condition Y.) Regardless if the doctor spends his entire week treating and supervising one patient with a certain contdition, the pay is the same on a per patient basis as if he sees 30 patients in the same week for the same condition.
It is up to individuals (doctors and patients) to make good decisions and help reduce the prevelence of resistant bacteria. Prepare and cook your food properly (mentioned in the press release) Antibiotics should only be used when there is a medical reason to do so. (i.e. a bacterial infection, not just "because I feel crummy" or for the flu, etc) And patients should complete their treatment regimines. We are not a bunch of six-year-olds, we should not have to be constantly reminded and supervised in order to do the right thing.
If we only used antibiotics in humans, only when they are clearly warranted (dangerous infection that is plausibly of bacterial origin), and with proper isolation of the patients, there would probably not be enough evolutionary pressure on bacteria to develop resistance
Indeed, and if we just shot all people with a bacterial infection, bacterial resistance would not be a very big issue either.
As another poster said, people walk into their doctor's office and demand antibiotics for whatever ails them. Whats more the doctors *give* it to the patients! What is up with that? Why not examine the patient, and treat them accordingly. Don't just prescribe antibiotics because the patient says that is what they need! For Christsakes, didn't you (the doc) go to school for 8 or 10 years or so, so that you would have more knoweldge about how to treat ailments than "joe sixpack"?! Come on! Do your job doctors!
And, what's worse, people that actually *do* need the antibiotics often stop taking them once they begin to feel better, and do not finish the treatment regimine. This is a major factor in resistance buildup. Just as you can build up a tolerence to poision by taking sub-leathal doeses over a long period of time, gradually increasing the dose, so to with bacteria. The patient stops the treatment one treatment before the sick bacteria was to recieve the leathal dose.
I am curious though...can you name me one research project that has conclusively linked feeding animals antibiotics has resulted in antibiotic resistance in bacteria that infect humans? I have not seen any to this point.
Farmer's markets and local growers still do a pretty good business where I am.
And I suspect that their business is growing, and will continue to do so. This is a very good thing, and I hope it continues throughout the nation. But (and you knew that word was comming;) it will be a long time before a significant percentage of the population goes through a farmers market to get their food. Farmers markets are growing in my location as well, and many producers are venturing up to the Washington DC area from here with their produce. But how many hundreds of thousands of people live in the metro DC area? How many hundreds of people visit the farmers markets in the area on a regular basis? The ratio of farmers market patrons to the general public is small, and is likely to remain so. By no means does this mean we should give up on the idea, it just means that commodity based agriculture must continue as well.
If oil suddenly became prohibitively expensive or much harder to get, you can bet they'd go back to buying local. They'd almost have to; else raise their prices horribly, and consumers would start going local again.
Perhaps this is true, but in today's US, I have to wonder. I think it would take a tremendous price increase in transportation for this to occur. And then, would people take action, or just complain about the high cost of food, and write their congressman?
Shipping charges are passed equally back to the farmer, and on to the consumer. (In cases of commodities, more on direct marketing later) I pay to have my milk hauled to a plant to be processed, so obviously that is directly passed to me. The processor pays to ship the processed product on for "further processing" This charge is passed back to me as well, because the processor deducts a portion of this from the price he pays me for the raw product. Shipping charges after that get passed on to the consumer. (of course, I have the most experience with the milk market, and that is largely regional anyway, so perhaps I am using a flawed example.) Anyway, that is how it goes for the "commodity agriculture" model. (or agriBIZ, factory farming, or whatever terminology you ascribe to.)
Unfortunately a large increase in fuel prices is likely to hurt the direct marketer harder than the convientional farmer. The reason is that the producer must still get his produce to market. Say he takes 500 pounds of whatever to the market in his vehichle that gets 15 miles per gallon. If the market is 15 miles away, and fuel is 2 bucks a gallon, it cost him $2.00 to get 500 lbs of stuff there, or $0.004 per lb. A semi truck hauls a load of produce (50,000 lbs) 600 miles to market at 7 miles per gallon. At $2.00 fuel, it cost $171.43 for the trip, or approximately $0.0034 per lb. So, for this example at least, the price per lb for the produce must increase more for the direct marketer, due to the fuel cost. And this does not include the cost of fuel in the production of the produce. In large scale organic production fuel use is greater due to the fact that it is more labor intensive. Weeds must be dealt with via cultivation, and not chemical means. It is cheaper to spray a herbicide than it is to cultivate multiple times to "knock down" weeds until the crop is tall enough to shade out the weeds. (I know, I use both methods)
Of course, much of your post deals with growing your own produce, which I think more people should do. Most people could not consume what could be grown on a 10' x 10' plot of ground. (Victory Gardens, as I believe they were called during WW2.) More people should follow your (and zogger's and my) example. However, as I said in my previous post, I fear that large numbers of people will not follow this example. Affluence breeds a need for convience, and we do live in a society that has a large amount of "extra" money. People by boneless, skinless chicken breast, not a whole chicken. (hell, people just go out to eat more often than not) If people were truely finiancially "stapped" many things would change to be sure. Hopefully this change can come about without large scale suffering first.
All in all I agree with what you say, even down to you comparing all this to open source. Of course, true to form, I doubt open source will rule the world anytime soon either. I think this goes back to the instant gratification demands of the public as well. People do not want to recompile several times, eventhough the end product can be superior. Just give them somehting that works sometimes, but is easy to install and operate, and big brother be damned. (I should know, I have used serveral "superior" operating systems that have gone nowhere. CP/M, Concurrent DOS, OS/2, and now am switching over to Linux. Lets hope I am not its curse!:)
Lemme see......wasn't this originally about generating electricity from manure? I suppose this is -1 OFFTOPIC! Oh well.
I suppose that in the near term the best that we can do is live our lives as an example that others wish to follow. (and, in the future, do not saw a tree down to land on my leg, breaking it, and providing me all this time to wax eloquent on philisophical priciples. I need to produce something other than keystrokes!:)
Yes, probably expensive to start, but your alternative is? Keep doing what you are doing, slowly go broke, wait until federal price supports evaporate?
To cull one quote out of that missive was indeed difficult, but I would like to just make a few comments that more or less relate to that quote.
1> I suppose I am not quite as pessimistic about agriculture's future. I have (and my father before me, and his father as well) made a good living farming. Certainly I do not do everything as my grandfather did. Just as certain is the fact that I will have to continue to change to conitnue to make a good living. But, this ability to change is not just exclusive to myself. I see this same ability to change in my neighbors as well, so I think the future is not quite so bleak.
2> When it comes time to make a change, you basically have three options.
1, niche marketing (farmers markets, organics, and the like) Reduction in the size (but not scope, diversification is normally increased) normally accompanies this.
2. Increase efficiencies. The adoption of new technologies often accompany this. Trying to squeeze income out of as many products as you produce as possible. (methane digestion, CHP, bio-fuel production, etc spring to mind first, but that is what I have been concentrating on for the last several months. I am sure there are other examples.) 3. Increase in size, thus gaining economies of scale. This speaks for itself I think, allthough I would just say that this can be a sucessful stratagey as well.
All three of the above options need to be taking place for agriculture (in this country) to continue. Organincs *will not* feed the world! Yields are significantly reduced with organic practices. This is not to say that organic production is bad, in fact, I am quite in favor of it (at least organic crop production, organic animal production, to me, reeks of cruelty. If I get an infection, or some sickness, I access the medical system, and get treated using all technologies that are available to me, antibiotics included. Why should I let a cow, or other animal, suffer with some condition when there is treatment available?) The problem is, for organics to feed a significant portion of the population, *many* more people will have to leave urban areas and take up food production. In this matter, I have no doubt that you are the exception, and not the rule when it comes to the attitudes of people leaving the city. Farmers markets and the like are needed, and a good thing as well, but will not be "golden path" to the future of agriculture either. Most people want convienience above all else. They want to stop one place and take care of as much of their shopping as possible. This is why Walmart is the number one food retailer in the US today. (but more on that in a moment.) In order for the population to be fed, commodity agriculture must continue, and indeed must be a balance between options 1, 2, and 3 above.
I think that the force driving the consolidation of agriculture is not so much a bunch of rich white guys sitting in board rooms wringing their hands and trying to affect world domination. Rather, the force doing the driving is nothing more than the consumer, and what he or she demands. As stated before, Walmart is the top food retailer in the US. Because of this, Walmart needs a steady and reliable supply of products to sell. Also, it is quite advantageous for them to purchase a large quantity of items from one place. Because of this, the companies that supply products to Walmart (and Kroger, A&P, pick your favorite national chain) expand to meet the demands of the purchasing company. Now, because many of the items that agriculture produces are perishable, and cannot be stockpiled, these suppliers need to ensure that they have an adequate supply of raw material comming in at all times with as little excess as possible. Thus, packers vertically integrate (i.e. raise the livestock they slaughter) and other companies contract with growers to grow a certain product. (Coors brewing comes to mind, as they are close by. Their barley is grown by farmers, but they really never own the crop, they just provide the capital investment, Coors provides the seed, and the market for the crop, and pay the farmer for their investment of time, capital, etc)
I say all this, not to agree with what is happening, but to recognize that this is reality. If we dont want the world to be controlled by a handfull of large corperations, then we have to admonish the consumer to change their ways, not just the farmers.
I think this is about enough typing for now. Must go produce something besides carbon dioxide.
I suppose I should just leave the bulk of your comments alone and just accept them for what they are; your opinions. You make some valid points to be sure, but perhaps extrapolate them too far. But, I said I was going to leave the comments alone so I will proceed to my question.
I am curious as to the design of the digester you came up with. Single stage, multi-stage, plug flow, batch, continuous flow, what? Also, I am curious as to what kind of efficiencies you experienced in terms of cubic feet of gas produced per lb of volitile solids, composition of the gas, etc.
I own and operate a dairy and poultry farm, and am designing a digester system that will hopefully process both manures, thus explaining my interest.
It should probably be stated that one reason that technology such as this is slow to take off is because it is, like so much in agriculture, *expensive*. (or can be) Sure, you or I can go out and cobble together a small scale digester to prove the concept works, scaling it up to process several tons of material per day can be a different story. So, before we criticize the farmer for not thinking outside of the box, or being stubborn, or whatever, think about living his life. (granted, you say you have worked on farms, so perhaps I am puting words in your mouth, if so forgive me) There is only so much money that the owner/farmer can have to invest. Does he put it in things "proven" to provide a return on that investment (doing things much like he always has), or try new, unproven, technologies? (thinking outside the box) With todays slim margins the choice is difficult.
Bah! It is midnight and my fingers are refusing to work properly, and my brain is shutting down. Perhaps in the morning I will remember what I wanted to say.....
They have faster response time, translating into more stopping distance at speed
I cannot imagine that the.05 second faster that the LEDs will light up would add up to reducing stopping distance by more than 2 inches or so. If localities were really interested in saftey they would increase the "on-time" for the yellow light from 3 seconds, back to 5. But no....revenue generated from red light runners is more important than saftey....
Indeed...perhaps the reason they do not put LEDs for the yellow lights is that in the next few years they plan to get rid of them all together...
(ok....I know that was offtopic...but that subject is just my pet peeve....so sue me.)
A principle factor is that America's business leaders simply don't want to think about complex technology issues - they want to think about golf.
If this is true, the future of open source is dark, indeed... =(
Another reason the above seems probable is that the general computing populace is IGNORANT! (forgive me, I am under the influence of the formatting of the article)
Lets face it, the average computer (Windows) user will look at you as if you are a god if you can go to a DOS prompt and type DIR C:\progra~1\blah\blah/ah/p and know what you are looking at. People like this will not be able to take advantage of Open Source.
The Hawaiian Faulkes Project telescope's servo motors ripped the telescope apart today due to an extraordinarily large amount of users trying to point the telescope at various points in the sky at the same time.
Rumor has it that the trouble started approximately 5 minutes after a story on the telescope appeared on the website "Slashdot.org", something commonly refered to as "/.ing".
A representative by the name of "CmdrTaco" of slashdot.org said only "No Comment" when asked about issues of liability.....
A most wonderful press release to be sure. Easy to iendly emmissions....blah blah blah. Nowhere in the press release is there anything giving any clue as to how the thrust produced with this fuel compares to current "non-hybrid" fuel.
From the release replacement boosters would have to be "somewhat longer". Indeed, most likely such vague language is there for a reason, and we will not be exploring the Sol system on the backs of swarms of angry bees anytime soon.
Just in time too.....since we will be depopulating the ISS soon.....::sigh::
OS/2 provided a stable and smoothly-multitasking 32-bit platform
The key word there being stable! I seem to remeber that one of the (unfortunate) marketing mantras was that it was "a better DOS than DOS, and a better Windows than Windows" It certainly was. Multinode BBS setups running even DOS based programs were as nearly flawless. My machines could go months between crashes. Compare that to Windows 3.1 (Win95, 98, Me, etc for that matter as well)
Alas....I am slipping back into the halcyon days of youth...
From the article: All statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.
Of course, it stands to reason. IBM did not have a plan for OS/2 in 1992 when it was a viable product, much less now! I question why they need a "strategy" to let something fade into oblivion.
Space technology is our only answer against all extraterrestrial threats, from comet impact to solar flares to asteroids
While the above is a good point, an aggressive space exploration program will take care of protecting the human race from much more than solar flares and the like. In these "Post September 11" days that it seems we all like to talk about, where would you rather be living when a smallpox, or some other pathogenic outbreak occurs, Baltimore Maryland, or the Moon?
I think it is best if people try to put the fan-epoch of their lives behind them at a certain point, as part of their personal-cultural adolescence.
I think that if by the above you are refering to: a neurotic escapism that often appears as an express desire to inhabit the worlds constructed by the stories, etc. I think you are wrong!
I get up most mornings at 3am, and work my a$$ off until around 7:30pm each day. (Taking some time off to eat in between those hours, it sucks to be self-employed sometimes) and being able to "escape" into the worlds created by the stories is not "neurotic" but healthy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and being able to just let go for 2 hours every 3 years or so that another movie in a franchise arrives..... well.... it hardly makes one neurotic.
Lighten up. Its just a movie. (Albeit a movie with much mythos or backstory to make it all the more enjoyable.)
Perhaps you should look at your own links to animal feed rules! Yes, cattle can be fed animal protien, but not animal protien derived from ruminents. (These include deer, cattle, buffalo, etc, etc.) So, no deer parts are being fed to cattle.
Slashdot Mirror
My God! There are two of me! When I got married (omg...7 years ago!) we decided we didnt have the money for a TV. After a couple of weeks, we decided we did not miss it in the least. (Of course, we were busy with "other things" at the time too...)
I thought the current commander's last name was Ken Bowersox, not Bowerson...Shows what I know....
I was thinking in pseudo-physical terms where 1 and 0 are two bits
;)
Then we are in agreement!
Next time you are in your airplane flying around in poor visibility, you might notice that there are numerous round gauges and dials there in front of you in the cockpit. Theses are called instruments, and by reading them correctly, you will be able to figure out where you are going. In visibilty that is so poor that you cannot look out and see the world around you, you will be operating under instrument flight rules, or IFR. Hope you are certified for IFR flight. It is interesting to note that IFR has existed much longer than GPS, and in fact a GPS reciever is not one of the instruments that your craft must posess in order to operate under IFR.
My whole point is that people that need accuracy have it now, and will continue to have it. Its just not free.
Perhaps not, but in this regard, we are equals.
Certainly I would agree with what you say. I am fairly familliar with paying surveying bills, so lessening them would be a help. However surveyors will not be using handheld Garmins to do their work anytime soon. (Indeed, I do not believe that GPS data is valid for a legal survey)
I suppose that the intent of my original post was twofold.
As an aside, while I never surveyed for a profession, I did learn (kinda) how to do it back in college. I always thought it would be rather fun to go find the "iron pin located 2 chains NW of a big oak tree" that was driven there 150 years ago or so....I am sure that if I did that for a living, I would find that quite dull.
In summary, I fear that I did not express myself properly in my original post. It is not the first time, I fear. (as hard as that is to believe!)
You are correct. In fact, I had no idea that there was any such thing as geochacheing until this very moment. From visiting the website, it would appear that it is supposed to be at least somewhat difficult? Thusly, less accuracy should make for more fun?
/. )
In all seriousness, it says much for the state of humanity when we can engage in such things due to the availabilty of free time. We're not so bad off after all I suppose. (Not that I begrudge geocachers, I do stupid things with my freetime as well.....like read
1 bit is plenty thank you. On or off, what else is there?
Perhaps I just don't get it, but I am having trouble figuring out why anyone (outside of a small subset of the population) would need accuracy less than 50 feet or so. I suspect people that really need accuracy greater than this currently have the tools to achieve such accuracy. It's not like most people are letting their GPS device drive their vehicles or something. Plus for people that need better accuracy, there are means by which to get it, depending on how much you want to spend.
But, as I said earlier, perhaps I just don't get it....
Campylobacter may build up a resistance. Mind you, no one has proven this to be the case. Indeed, along with being the most common cause of bacterial diarrhea, it is also one of the most common bacteria period. I am fairly certain that we could pull bacterial cultures from various areas in your home and find that campylobacter is present, and even fluoroquinolone resistant strains, even if there has never been a piece of chicken meat in your home. While this bacteria may affect over 2 million people each year, this is not the same as 2 million people being affected because they have consumed resistant bacterial strains that were contained in poultry that consumed antibiotics. (As the press release would want people to believe) This release is just for the purpose of spreading the FUD
This is not to say that antibiotics should be fed to animals as a matter of course, certainly they should not. This is only to say that there is not one documented case of resistant bacteria being caused by animal production.
Well, gee, that's why I said "with proper isolation", which includes supervision
Alas, the chances of proper supervision with proper isolation happening are very nearly zero. Furthermore, they will continue to be so as long as the medical field is told what to do by the medical insurance companies. (i.e. the insurance company decides that they will pay amount $X for condition Y.) Regardless if the doctor spends his entire week treating and supervising one patient with a certain contdition, the pay is the same on a per patient basis as if he sees 30 patients in the same week for the same condition.
It is up to individuals (doctors and patients) to make good decisions and help reduce the prevelence of resistant bacteria. Prepare and cook your food properly (mentioned in the press release) Antibiotics should only be used when there is a medical reason to do so. (i.e. a bacterial infection, not just "because I feel crummy" or for the flu, etc) And patients should complete their treatment regimines. We are not a bunch of six-year-olds, we should not have to be constantly reminded and supervised in order to do the right thing.
If we only used antibiotics in humans, only when they are clearly warranted (dangerous infection that is plausibly of bacterial origin), and with proper isolation of the patients, there would probably not be enough evolutionary pressure on bacteria to develop resistance
Indeed, and if we just shot all people with a bacterial infection, bacterial resistance would not be a very big issue either.
As another poster said, people walk into their doctor's office and demand antibiotics for whatever ails them. Whats more the doctors *give* it to the patients! What is up with that? Why not examine the patient, and treat them accordingly. Don't just prescribe antibiotics because the patient says that is what they need! For Christsakes, didn't you (the doc) go to school for 8 or 10 years or so, so that you would have more knoweldge about how to treat ailments than "joe sixpack"?! Come on! Do your job doctors!
And, what's worse, people that actually *do* need the antibiotics often stop taking them once they begin to feel better, and do not finish the treatment regimine. This is a major factor in resistance buildup. Just as you can build up a tolerence to poision by taking sub-leathal doeses over a long period of time, gradually increasing the dose, so to with bacteria. The patient stops the treatment one treatment before the sick bacteria was to recieve the leathal dose.
I am curious though...can you name me one research project that has conclusively linked feeding animals antibiotics has resulted in antibiotic resistance in bacteria that infect humans? I have not seen any to this point.
Farmer's markets and local growers still do a pretty good business where I am.
;) it will be a long time before a significant percentage of the population goes through a farmers market to get their food. Farmers markets are growing in my location as well, and many producers are venturing up to the Washington DC area from here with their produce. But how many hundreds of thousands of people live in the metro DC area? How many hundreds of people visit the farmers markets in the area on a regular basis? The ratio of farmers market patrons to the general public is small, and is likely to remain so. By no means does this mean we should give up on the idea, it just means that commodity based agriculture must continue as well.
And I suspect that their business is growing, and will continue to do so. This is a very good thing, and I hope it continues throughout the nation. But (and you knew that word was comming
If oil suddenly became prohibitively expensive or much harder to get, you can bet they'd go back to buying local. They'd almost have to; else raise their prices horribly, and consumers would start going local again.
Perhaps this is true, but in today's US, I have to wonder. I think it would take a tremendous price increase in transportation for this to occur. And then, would people take action, or just complain about the high cost of food, and write their congressman?
Shipping charges are passed equally back to the farmer, and on to the consumer. (In cases of commodities, more on direct marketing later) I pay to have my milk hauled to a plant to be processed, so obviously that is directly passed to me. The processor pays to ship the processed product on for "further processing" This charge is passed back to me as well, because the processor deducts a portion of this from the price he pays me for the raw product. Shipping charges after that get passed on to the consumer. (of course, I have the most experience with the milk market, and that is largely regional anyway, so perhaps I am using a flawed example.) Anyway, that is how it goes for the "commodity agriculture" model. (or agriBIZ, factory farming, or whatever terminology you ascribe to.)
Unfortunately a large increase in fuel prices is likely to hurt the direct marketer harder than the convientional farmer. The reason is that the producer must still get his produce to market. Say he takes 500 pounds of whatever to the market in his vehichle that gets 15 miles per gallon. If the market is 15 miles away, and fuel is 2 bucks a gallon, it cost him $2.00 to get 500 lbs of stuff there, or $0.004 per lb. A semi truck hauls a load of produce (50,000 lbs) 600 miles to market at 7 miles per gallon. At $2.00 fuel, it cost $171.43 for the trip, or approximately $0.0034 per lb. So, for this example at least, the price per lb for the produce must increase more for the direct marketer, due to the fuel cost. And this does not include the cost of fuel in the production of the produce. In large scale organic production fuel use is greater due to the fact that it is more labor intensive. Weeds must be dealt with via cultivation, and not chemical means. It is cheaper to spray a herbicide than it is to cultivate multiple times to "knock down" weeds until the crop is tall enough to shade out the weeds. (I know, I use both methods)
Of course, much of your post deals with growing your own produce, which I think more people should do. Most people could not consume what could be grown on a 10' x 10' plot of ground. (Victory Gardens, as I believe they were called during WW2.) More people should follow your (and zogger's and my) example. However, as I said in my previous post, I fear that large numbers of people will not follow this example. Affluence breeds a need for convience, and we do live in a society that has a large amount of "extra" money. People by boneless, skinless chicken breast, not a whole chicken. (hell, people just go out to eat more often than not) If people were truely finiancially "stapped" many things would change to be sure. Hopefully this change can come about without large scale suffering first.
All in all I agree with what you say, even down to you comparing all this to open source. Of course, true to form, I doubt open source will rule the world anytime soon either. I think this goes back to the instant gratification demands of the public as well. People do not want to recompile several times, eventhough the end product can be superior. Just give them somehting that works sometimes, but is easy to install and operate, and big brother be damned. (I should know, I have used serveral "superior" operating systems that have gone nowhere. CP/M, Concurrent DOS, OS/2, and now am switching over to Linux. Lets hope I am not its curse!:)
Lemme see......wasn't this originally about generating electricity from manure? I suppose this is -1 OFFTOPIC! Oh well.
I suppose that in the near term the best that we can do is live our lives as an example that others wish to follow. (and, in the future, do not saw a tree down to land on my leg, breaking it, and providing me all this time to wax eloquent on philisophical priciples. I need to produce something other than keystrokes!:)
To cull one quote out of that missive was indeed difficult, but I would like to just make a few comments that more or less relate to that quote.
1> I suppose I am not quite as pessimistic about agriculture's future. I have (and my father before me, and his father as well) made a good living farming. Certainly I do not do everything as my grandfather did. Just as certain is the fact that I will have to continue to change to conitnue to make a good living. But, this ability to change is not just exclusive to myself. I see this same ability to change in my neighbors as well, so I think the future is not quite so bleak.
2> When it comes time to make a change, you basically have three options.
All three of the above options need to be taking place for agriculture (in this country) to continue. Organincs *will not* feed the world! Yields are significantly reduced with organic practices. This is not to say that organic production is bad, in fact, I am quite in favor of it (at least organic crop production, organic animal production, to me, reeks of cruelty. If I get an infection, or some sickness, I access the medical system, and get treated using all technologies that are available to me, antibiotics included. Why should I let a cow, or other animal, suffer with some condition when there is treatment available?) The problem is, for organics to feed a significant portion of the population, *many* more people will have to leave urban areas and take up food production. In this matter, I have no doubt that you are the exception, and not the rule when it comes to the attitudes of people leaving the city. Farmers markets and the like are needed, and a good thing as well, but will not be "golden path" to the future of agriculture either. Most people want convienience above all else. They want to stop one place and take care of as much of their shopping as possible. This is why Walmart is the number one food retailer in the US today. (but more on that in a moment.) In order for the population to be fed, commodity agriculture must continue, and indeed must be a balance between options 1, 2, and 3 above.
I think that the force driving the consolidation of agriculture is not so much a bunch of rich white guys sitting in board rooms wringing their hands and trying to affect world domination. Rather, the force doing the driving is nothing more than the consumer, and what he or she demands. As stated before, Walmart is the top food retailer in the US. Because of this, Walmart needs a steady and reliable supply of products to sell. Also, it is quite advantageous for them to purchase a large quantity of items from one place. Because of this, the companies that supply products to Walmart (and Kroger, A&P, pick your favorite national chain) expand to meet the demands of the purchasing company. Now, because many of the items that agriculture produces are perishable, and cannot be stockpiled, these suppliers need to ensure that they have an adequate supply of raw material comming in at all times with as little excess as possible. Thus, packers vertically integrate (i.e. raise the livestock they slaughter) and other companies contract with growers to grow a certain product. (Coors brewing comes to mind, as they are close by. Their barley is grown by farmers, but they really never own the crop, they just provide the capital investment, Coors provides the seed, and the market for the crop, and pay the farmer for their investment of time, capital, etc)
I say all this, not to agree with what is happening, but to recognize that this is reality. If we dont want the world to be controlled by a handfull of large corperations, then we have to admonish the consumer to change their ways, not just the farmers.
I think this is about enough typing for now. Must go produce something besides carbon dioxide.
Where to start....
I suppose I should just leave the bulk of your comments alone and just accept them for what they are; your opinions. You make some valid points to be sure, but perhaps extrapolate them too far. But, I said I was going to leave the comments alone so I will proceed to my question.
I am curious as to the design of the digester you came up with. Single stage, multi-stage, plug flow, batch, continuous flow, what? Also, I am curious as to what kind of efficiencies you experienced in terms of cubic feet of gas produced per lb of volitile solids, composition of the gas, etc.
I own and operate a dairy and poultry farm, and am designing a digester system that will hopefully process both manures, thus explaining my interest.
It should probably be stated that one reason that technology such as this is slow to take off is because it is, like so much in agriculture, *expensive*. (or can be) Sure, you or I can go out and cobble together a small scale digester to prove the concept works, scaling it up to process several tons of material per day can be a different story. So, before we criticize the farmer for not thinking outside of the box, or being stubborn, or whatever, think about living his life. (granted, you say you have worked on farms, so perhaps I am puting words in your mouth, if so forgive me) There is only so much money that the owner/farmer can have to invest. Does he put it in things "proven" to provide a return on that investment (doing things much like he always has), or try new, unproven, technologies? (thinking outside the box) With todays slim margins the choice is difficult.
Bah! It is midnight and my fingers are refusing to work properly, and my brain is shutting down. Perhaps in the morning I will remember what I wanted to say.....
They have faster response time, translating into more stopping distance at speed
.05 second faster that the LEDs will light up would add up to reducing stopping distance by more than 2 inches or so. If localities were really interested in saftey they would increase the "on-time" for the yellow light from 3 seconds, back to 5. But no....revenue generated from red light runners is more important than saftey....
I cannot imagine that the
Indeed...perhaps the reason they do not put LEDs for the yellow lights is that in the next few years they plan to get rid of them all together...
(ok....I know that was offtopic...but that subject is just my pet peeve....so sue me.)
A principle factor is that America's business leaders simply don't want to think about complex technology issues - they want to think about golf.
/ah /p and know what you are looking at. People like this will not be able to take advantage of Open Source.
If this is true, the future of open source is dark, indeed... =(
Another reason the above seems probable is that the general computing populace is IGNORANT! (forgive me, I am under the influence of the formatting of the article)
Lets face it, the average computer (Windows) user will look at you as if you are a god if you can go to a DOS prompt and type
DIR C:\progra~1\blah\blah
The Hawaiian Faulkes Project telescope's servo motors ripped the telescope apart today due to an extraordinarily large amount of users trying to point the telescope at various points in the sky at the same time.
Rumor has it that the trouble started approximately 5 minutes after a story on the telescope appeared on the website "Slashdot.org", something commonly refered to as "/.ing".
A representative by the name of "CmdrTaco" of slashdot.org said only "No Comment" when asked about issues of liability.....
Christ! Even if I do use preview, I still screw up.
Easy to iendly emmissions....blah blah blah
Should read: Easy to fuel, easier to control, friendly emmissions.....blah blah blah
Foolish me....now where is thst preview button.....
A most wonderful press release to be sure. Easy to iendly emmissions....blah blah blah. Nowhere in the press release is there anything giving any clue as to how the thrust produced with this fuel compares to current "non-hybrid" fuel.
From the release replacement boosters would have to be "somewhat longer". Indeed, most likely such vague language is there for a reason, and we will not be exploring the Sol system on the backs of swarms of angry bees anytime soon.
Just in time too.....since we will be depopulating the ISS soon.....::sigh::
OS/2 provided a stable and smoothly-multitasking 32-bit platform
The key word there being stable! I seem to remeber that one of the (unfortunate) marketing mantras was that it was "a better DOS than DOS, and a better Windows than Windows" It certainly was. Multinode BBS setups running even DOS based programs were as nearly flawless. My machines could go months between crashes. Compare that to Windows 3.1 (Win95, 98, Me, etc for that matter as well)
Alas....I am slipping back into the halcyon days of youth...
From the article:
...I suppose I should go change my nickname....
All statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.
Of course, it stands to reason. IBM did not have a plan for OS/2 in 1992 when it was a viable product, much less now! I question why they need a "strategy" to let something fade into oblivion.
Space technology is our only answer against all extraterrestrial threats, from comet impact to solar flares to asteroids
While the above is a good point, an aggressive space exploration program will take care of protecting the human race from much more than solar flares and the like. In these "Post September 11" days that it seems we all like to talk about, where would you rather be living when a smallpox, or some other pathogenic outbreak occurs, Baltimore Maryland, or the Moon?
I'll take the moon, thank you
I think it is best if people try to put the fan-epoch of their lives behind them at a certain point, as part of their personal-cultural adolescence.
I think that if by the above you are refering to:
a neurotic escapism that often appears as an express desire to inhabit the worlds constructed by the stories, etc.
I think you are wrong!
I get up most mornings at 3am, and work my a$$ off until around 7:30pm each day. (Taking some time off to eat in between those hours, it sucks to be self-employed sometimes) and being able to "escape" into the worlds created by the stories is not "neurotic" but healthy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and being able to just let go for 2 hours every 3 years or so that another movie in a franchise arrives..... well.... it hardly makes one neurotic.
Lighten up. Its just a movie. (Albeit a movie with much mythos or backstory to make it all the more enjoyable.)
Wow, a life sized LoB model? And here I was happy with my Borg Cube Christmas ornament! "We are the Borg, Enjoy your hollidays, Resistance is Futile!"
Perhaps you should look at your own links to animal feed rules! Yes, cattle can be fed animal protien, but not animal protien derived from ruminents. (These include deer, cattle, buffalo, etc, etc.) So, no deer parts are being fed to cattle.