If you want to keep a 550 watt air conditioner powered full blast for a week by people riding bicycles, you will need to hire 21 people who each will ride the bicycle for 40 hours.
The truth is I like thinking more about smoking pot then actually smoking …
Maybe the best part of being high, is thinking about how much fun it is to be high. To read about other’s adventures about getting high and learning about genetics and strains of cannabis. To learn about the health pros and cons to smoking, to read the debate over cannabis and how legal it should be. Often it seems dreaming about doing something is a lot more fun then actually doing.
I think a lot about Climate Change Action, but I often wonder at what cost …
I think this is a point that needs to made and not glossed over. If you want to transition the energy system, that fine, but there is going to be real human and environmental costs to doing that. There is going to be enormous amounts of political power used and abused, community destroyed, serious environmental derogation. Maybe it’s worth it as climate change will be rather bad, but we should proceed with caution.
VANCE PACKARD’s idea to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN 🇺🇸 from SIXTY YEARS AGO.
In Cornucopia City, as I understand it, all the buildings will be made of a special papier-mâché. These houses can be torn down and rebuilt every spring and fall at housecleaning time. The motorcars of Cornucopia will be made of a lightweight plastic that develops fatigue and begins to melt if driven more than four thousand miles. Owners who turn in their old motorcars at the regular turn-in dates—New Year’s, Easter, Independence Day, and Labor Day—will be rewarded with a one-hundred-dollar United States Prosperity-Through-Growth Bond for each motorcar turned in. And a special additional bond will be awarded to those families able to turn in four or more motorcars at each disposal date.
One fourth of the factories of Cornucopia City will be located on the edge of a cliff, and the ends of their assembly lines can be swung to the front or rear doors depending upon the public demand for the product being produced.When demand is slack, the end of the assembly line will be swung to the rear door and the output of refrigerators or other products will drop out of sight and go directly to their graveyard without first overwhelming the consumer market.
Every Monday, the people of Cornucopia City will stage a gala launching of a rocket into outer space at the local Air Force base. This is another of their contributions to national prosperity. Components for the rockets will have been made by eighteen subcontractors and prime contractors in the area. One officially stated objective of the space probing will be to report to the earth people what the back side of Neptune’s moon looks like.
Wednesday will be Navy Day. The Navy will send a surplus warship to the city dock. It will be filled with surplus play-suits, cake mix, vacuum cleaners, and trampolines that have been stockpiled at the local United States Department of Commerce complex of warehouses for surplus products. The ship will go thirty miles out to sea, where the crew will sink it from a safe distance. As we peek in on this Cornucopia City of the future, we learn that the big, heartening news of the week is that the Guild of Appliance Repair Artists has passed a resolution declaring it unpatriotic for any member even to look inside an ailing appliance that is more than two years old.
The heart of Cornucopia City will be occupied by a titanic pushbutton super mart built to simulate a fairyland. This is where all the people spend many happy hours a week strolling and buying to their heart’s content. In this paradise of high-velocity selling, there are no jangling cash registers to disrupt the holiday mood. Instead, the shopping couples—with their five children trailing behind, each pushing his own shopping cart—gaily wave their lifetime electronic credit cards in front of a recording eye. Each child has his own card, which was issued to him at birth.
Conveniently located throughout the mart are receptacles where the people can dispose of the old-fashioned products they bought on a previous shopping trip. In the jewelry section, for example, a playfully designed sign by a receptacle reads: “Throw your old watches here!” Cornucopia City’s marvelous mart is open around the clock, Sundays included. For the Sunday shoppers who had developed a churchgoing habit in earlier years, there is a little chapel available for meditation in one of the side alcoves.
Is Cornucopia City to become not a feverish dream, but, instead, an extreme prototype for the City of Tomorrow?
Read it online: https://www.soilandhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/0303critic/030320wastemakers/wastemakers.pdf
Pets! 🐕️🐕️
I am no fan of pets – dogs, cats, ferrets, snakes, you name it that people have solely for purposes of companionship. It seems awful lonely and deprived to depend on an animal to keep one as a companion. There are fellow humans to do that, community events to be involved in rather than relying on an animal that prays on your emotions for food and shelter.
There is a whole industry that has sprung up around animal rights that claim that dogs and cats are something that need special protection. Right wing politicians that want to cut food and health care to needy children are usually the most vocal advocates for animal rights. But dogs and cats just seek their biological needs met, they don’t have feelings or emotions. They do pray on our own emotions but they’re not thinking beings with complex emotions beyond what is learned to better meet their biological instincts.
To be sure, animals have biological needs to healthy. Domesticated animals have significant needs that only humans can provide to the thanks to breeding. Domestic animals have specific diets, shelter requirements and even a need for human attention to productive healthy animals.
Often the law views food animals and those hunted differently. It puts a higher burden on humans to be humane compared to nature. And it certainly puts a much higher level of care towards animals then other man made products like motors, electronics and other non living equipment not made out of renewable resources.
I think we would be a lot better off if we viewed pets more like livestock and the renewable resources they are. Don’t abuse them, meet their biological needs but don’t worship them – they can always be recreated and replaced. Dog breeding is a a big business. It should be fine to discard a pet should the cost of surgery or health care is too high and just get another one. Badly behaved and trained animals should be replaced.
I have no need for a pet now but I could some day envision having a dog or cat for practical purposes. A cat could control rats and mice in the barnyard, a use of waste milk. A dog might be useful for hunting or to guard a barnyard against predators. But I can’t imagine having any emotional connection beyond servicing the land.
Ultimately what I care about is the land and a healthy ecosystem. I am always a bit alarmed about the number of birds attacked by domestic cats and I can’t imagine having a dog in a city and carrying around a bag of dog crap to throw in the trash and send to the landfill. I’m fine with shoveling and spreading manure from herbivores in support of the land and producing food to eat or fur to sell but I just don’t like the idea of having a dog or cat solely because one is lonely.
Why I Think My Dream House Would Be Small
I think my dream house or cabin would be as small as possible. As a single guy, I don’t need a lot of space, just room enough for a small table, a place to put a futon-style bed, a dresser, some room to hang clothes, have a stove and sink, a small propane heated shower, and a toilet or shitter bucket to take out to the outhouse.
I don’t really want or need a lot of space, because the more space you have, the more you need to clean. More space means more need for heating, more need for lighting and more room for stuff that will break. Fewer things, mean fewer things to fail and break and a simpler world to live in.
I look at horror with marble countertops and fancy carpets. So many things to break and fail. So many things I don’t think add much value to life. I don’t like complicated wiring or all that technology – especially nowadays when you can do almost everything on your laptop. I do like the big screen and a standalone keyboard but those aren’t something that take a lot of room. I doubt I’ll ever want internet at home, except maybe through my Smartphone.
They really need an August holiday 🏖
May – Memorial Day
June – Juneteenth
July – Independence Day
August – ????
September – Labor Day
October – Columbus Day