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Why You Should Sleep Until Noon During Black Fly Season

Andy | May 23, 2022

Black flies — there really is only one solution to them: don’t be hanging out until they are gone for the night. That means waiting for darkness to come over the land. Then the party can get started.

Black flies aren’t out all night. So that’s the best time to up and own doing things. Like cooking dinner, drinking beer, and hanging out by the campfire. There is nothing wrong with staying up all night during black fly season, because the days really aren’t that wonderful, if you don’t like getting eaten alive.

Granted, in the darkness, you are somewhat restricted in what you can do. But bring a flashlight, and hell, maybe a bunch of Christmas lights, party lights, and big bright 100-watt equivalent florescent lights, and pretend it’s day light. It’s also cooler, and generally much nicer in then in the day time.

During black fly season, the whole purpose of the day is to be sleeping, and recovering from the hang overs of the previous night.

Why I Enguage in Zero Landfill Camping

Andy | July 13, 2012

Zero Landfill Automoible Assembly Plants.

You often hear commericals on radio that “Subrarus are made in zero landfill factories.” Basically, what they are talking about is their automobile assembly factory, where manufactured components are shipped in reusable containers (to save money), bolted or welded together, and finished up.

They do not include manufacturing of components, or the mining of raw materials to build the cars. Even at zero-landfill assembly factories, some waste is generated, but valuable metal scraps are sent to scrap dealers, and plastic garbage and other wastes are shipped off to municipal trash incinerators, and burned for energy. Zero-landfill Assembly factories typically also have recycling programs in lunch rooms for aluminum cans and recycling for paper in offices, which is fairly common in most industries.

When you read into the claim, you have to be kind of skeptical. Indeed, zero-landfill is much different then zero-waste, or near zero-waste as many environmentalists are persuing. Indeed, much of it’s just certification, rather then any real change in process — as it’s stupid not to reuse shipping containers, scrap waste metals, and do other things that save businesses money.

Zero Landfill Camping.

I don’t generate any trash when I camping that I haul home, and then take to the transfer station for disposal in a landfill. I seperate out the burnable trash from the non-burnable trash, the later which I take home for recycling either for remedemption of the deposit or regular municipal recycling at transfer station. I don’t leave any waste behind, and indeed, I often pick up litter from other persons, including small scraps of paper or plastic people overlook.

I do use styrofoam plates and plastic forks, paper towels, wet whipes, and often camp food comes in more packaging then stuff you get a home, as more stuff is canned or in dry packaging. I don’t use reusable bags when buying camp food, because having lots of plastic bags is handy for camping. It’s a lot easier to burn your trash, then have to wash up a lot of dishes. Food waste is also burned in a hot fire, because one doesn’t want attract bears.

I generate a lot more trash at camp then I do at home. Yet, I don’t want to haul a lot of smelly trash around, so the garbage gets burned at the end of the evening in the campfire. The day’s plastic bag full of burnables gets burned in the hot campfire at the end of day — and is almost instantly incinerated. I like watching trash burn, and I’m not that worried about it compared to what a lot of farmers and rural folks in more rural states burn regularly in their burn barrels and pits.

Tin cans are burned out, to rid of food residue, and tossed in the bin with the aluminim beer and beverage cans. Glass bottles are washed out. Anything that doesn’t burn is hauled home for recycling. I make sure to pick out any aluminum foil or partially burnt trash out of the fire pit. I don’t litter, and there is no trash generated that ever sees a landfill.

Mocking Zero-landfill Concept.

To a certain extent I am mocking the concept of zero-landfill manufacturing, that some manufacturers like to brag about it. Are farmers and rural residents who burn their garbage, recycle tin cans and glass, compost, zero-landfill folk? They are keeping their waste out of landfills after all.

But more seriously, it’s not zero-landfill but zero-waste we should be getting to as a society. It’s one things for a country boy out in the boonies to burning his garbage in a fire, it’s another thing for an urban society to be taking steps to reduce it’s waste. All of the country boys, farmers, and rural residents of the world, generate relatively little trash compared to what our big cities generate.

Cities need to find steps to recycle more of their waste, and recover their organics through source-seperated organics composting, biogas, or source-seperate organic biomass energy production. Cities need to find ways to keep their organic waste seperate from toxic technical materials — we got to stop dumping massive quanities of plastics and metals mixed with organics like food waste and brush into massive garbage incinerators and landfills.

People Who Pay the Individual Mandate Tax Should Get Healthcare

Andy | July 12, 2012

One of the problems I have with the individual mandate, is those who do not get healthcare insurance have to pay a tax, yet get nothing in return. That tax should go directly for paying for healthcare for those persons, by either using that revenue to add them to Medicaid or an assigned risk pool.

Option 1: Automatic Enrollment to Medicaid for Those Without Insurance.

Those who pay the individual mandate tax could automatically be enrolled in the government’s Medicaid program. The individual mandate tax could pay for the costs of enrolling these persons into medicaid. Medicaid would ensure these persons have access to basic healthcare, and because such an expansion would be paid directly out this tax, there would be no cost to government.

Option 2 Assigned Risk Pool for Those Without Insurance.

Alternatively, those who do not enroll in a private market insurance plan could be placed in the assigned risk pool, similiar to those who can’t buy insurance on the private market due to DWI or bad driving records. The individual mandate tax could pay for those individuals who don’t have insurance to be automatically assigned to an insurer, for it’s most basic plan.

Insurers would be forced to accept persons assigned to them, at random, by the government, who don’t currently have insurance. These individuals paying the individual mandate tax, would have their tax revenue handed over to the private company they are assigned to. Insurers would cover their healthcare costs, with very basic plans.

People Still Would Want to Get Insurance.

Being enrolled in Medicaid or a an Assigned Risk Pool insurance is far from an ideal solution for most people. People would be actively encouraged to buy insurance on the exchange, rather then taking whatever the government has randomly assigned to them, or government sponsored Medicaid.

Yet, the assigned risk pool is better then nothing.If for some reason a person didn’t sign up for insurance, they should be covered with basic healthcare insurance. Assigned risk is very market friendly, and is less government involved then expanding Medicaid, so it seems likely that would be the reform chosen for healthcare coverage for all.

Why I’ve Gotten Away from Using NYSDOT Topographic Maps

Andy | December 28, 2011

For the first year of doing topographic maps, I relied extensively on using NYSDOT topographic maps, I originally downloaded from the NYSGIS consortium website. The NYSDOT topographic maps have a lot of good information on them, an in many ways have the most accurate topography.

But what I’ve also found with those maps is they have several real limitations…

1) They Don’t Scale Well.

NYSDOT topographic maps are designed to viewed at 1:2400 feet ratio, as they are 7.5″ quads. You can get away with rendering them anywhere between 1:1800 to 1:2600, but beyond that the text looks too small, too crowded, or two pixelated. For smaller parks and larger areas, NYSDOT topographic maps do not work well.

2) Unneeded Information and Clutter.

DOT Topographic Maps try to suit the need of any user, and include information like town lines and other jurisdictional information that is unnecessarily for the average outdoors person.

3) Outdated Information.

Often topographic maps have dated information on man-made boundaries and buildings. The state often buys new land, demolishes existing buildings, and closes off trails. Old trails appear on topographic maps, as do labels such a “Restricted”, even though to this day such roads may be valid, despite the incorrect or outdated information on topographic maps.

4) Metric Scale; Differentiating Contour Scales.

Metric elevations are maddening for anyone trying to calculate their elevation from select DOT topo maps, and often when you load multiple topographic maps, they do not fit together seamlessly, as one will be using one unit for contours, while another will use another unit. Contour scales throughout the state very widely, which when put together can be confusing.

On the other hand, topos do have some benefits…

1) Most Accurate Shorelines.

The Census Water Area and Liner Water Shapefiles from TIGER/Line are pretty accurate, but they are not nearly as good as topographic maps.

2) Wetlands.

Currently I don’t have any good source of data or wetlands to add to my maps. I probably should do more research into this, as I know the state does have wetland maps available — but how much of a PITA are they to use?

3) Buildings.

Topographic maps have many of the buildings on them. While this information can be outdated, it does provide useful information to the viewer of such maps. TIGER/line has some features, like cemeteries and some buildings, but this data set is tiny compared to what’s on the NYSDOT topographic maps.

Residents of Adirondack and Catskill Park Are Older

Andy | November 18, 2011

It’s interesting to map the median age of New Yorkers by Census Blocks. While certain census blocks show a median age that is noticeably younger then some, e.g. juvenile institutions and colleges, a broader trend can be seen in Catskill and Adirondack Parks — residents there tend to be older.

Looking at this map, one can conclude residents of the Southern Tier, Tug Hill Regions, and North Country tend to be younger compared other portions of state, while in surburban areas people tend to be somewhat younger. Cities tend to have youngest populations, especially in neighborhoods touched by poverty and blight.

Despite what you might think, residents of Mohawk Valley are not particularly older then the rest of state. If anything, they are slightly younger. The idea that all of the young people are moving away from the Mohawk Valley isn’t supported by data, or at least new young people are coming back to replace the lost people.