Experiences

Eastern Hellbender

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Bill Hopkins, professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment at Virginia Tech, talks about the eastern hellbender and their ecological importance.

Want to eat healthy, buy our junk foods 🍟

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Lately I’ve been doing a lot of research on healthier options for eating, more whole foods and meals that are easy to cook, taste decent, and are filling. I’ve been looking at fiber rich, low glycemic index foods that fill you up from trusted sources of information like the government and universities.

But suddenly I’m now a prime target of the internet for the hawkers of diet foods. Much of which are anything but healthy – often high in added sugar, loaded with calories and heavily processed removing much of the nutritional value of the food.

Some examples of the advertising I’m seeing:

  • “Low fat” fortified with vegetables snack crackers
  • Fiber brownies
  • Greek yogurt with built in fruit
  • Microwave lean cuisine
  • Meal services packed in styrofoam and plastic
  • Vitamin pills of all sorts

All the kind of processed unhealthy foods you should be staying away from – often with a high mark up that uses up your money that could be spent on healthier foods.

Probably the only thing most of these health foods is healthy for is the burn barrel as all the plastic burns hot. But stay up wind of all that plastic and remember that a too hot of a fire will cause premature rust, just like eating too much processed foods will cause premature death.

When you have to buy organic because there is no other choice 🌿

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I am not fan of organic products, mostly because they are branding tactic slapped on by the government rather then a sustainable agricultural practice. Rarely is the label worth spending extra money on, it’s just something slapped on a package shortly to be thrown into the trash or burnt on up in the fire.

Unfortunately when you out there looking for healthier products, sometimes organic is only version sold at retailers. While I certainly wouldn’t pay extra for an organic label, which is literally trash, sometimes that’s the only option they stock. I ran into this issue when I was at Hannaford the other day, stocking up on groceries and the only option was organic tofu — it’s literally the same crap with a label.

Fortunately though it was inexpensive, price competitive with the non-organic tofu I buy at Walmart. Still I grumbled a bit when I put it in my cart, knowing the scam I was supporting. Now, I’ve been looking at getting some Quinoa to add to my diet next week, and I’m annoyed that the only choice stocked locally is organic. I get the retailers can only stock so many versions, and might not be cost-effective for them to stock less popular products.

Now, I don’t think buying organic is necessarily harmful to eat or even bad. It’s possible some of the techniques are more sustainable then conventional agriculture, but color me skeptical. But if it’s the only option, and it’s not absurdly expensive, I guess it’s worth paying the price, if its that or skipping new and nutritious options to add to my diet. I just had how popular culture dictates the branding in the market.

Region 4 Combined Sewer Overflows

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The dataset represents the locations of combined sewer overflow (CSOs) outfall locations in DEC Region 4, specifically the Albany Pool. It also includes overflow detection capabilities of CSO communities and overflow frequency data within a specified timeframe.

Combined sewer systems (CSS) are sewer systems that are designed to collect storm water runoff, domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater in the same pipe and bring it to the publicly owned treatment works (POTW) facilities. During rain events, when storm water enters the sewers, the capacity of the sewer system may be exceeded and the excess water will be discharged directly to a waterbody (rivers, streams, estuaries, and coastal waters). http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/48595.html

The cities of Albany, Troy, Cohoes, Rensselaer, Watervliet, and the Village of Green Island make up the partner communities in the Albany Pool Communities. Among the six communities there are nearly 100 CSO discharge points. The Albany and Rensselaer County Sewer Districts are connected to the CSO program through their State Pollution Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) permits, and are cooperating with the Pool communities in implementation of the Long Term Control Plan (LTCP) for the abatement of CSOs. Read more about this program at http://www.cdrpc.org/CSO.html.

Data Source: https://data.ny.gov/Energy-Environment/Combined-Sewer-Overflows-CSOs-Beginning-2013/ephi-ffu6

BOCES Districts of New York State

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In 1948, the New York State legislature created Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) to provide shared educational programs and services to school districts within the state. Today, there are 37 BOCES districts that consist of shared services between 712 school districts, namely every one outside of the New York City School Districts.

 

Public Fishing Access Locations – Trout Fishing

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This data displays the access locations of rivers and streams for fishing in New York State, as determined by fisheries biologists working for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It has been filtered by those streams that are listed as containing Brook, Rainbow, or Brown Trout. Balloon color shows what type of access -- boat, walk-in fishing, shore fishing, etc. Data Source: Recommended Fishing Rivers And Streams. https://data.ny.gov/Recreation/Recommended-Fishing-Rivers-And-Streams/jcxg-7gnm