The Old Folks Home

[Alaskan]

Ah!, here we have a special "the land owners have no water" fire trucks. So, that is covered.

Really, it comes down to how you think the law should be based.

Original Germanic Law (before they were influenced by the Romans) was the INDIVIDUAL before all else. So, the individual had full and complete rights even if that meant that the community suffered. This idea of law was brought to England, and then to the States. Rah, rah!

Roman Law is that the city, or empire, community, whatever is the most important. If the individual gets mashed in the process of protecting the community no one cares.

And current Germany is all Roman law now...or that attitude.

Anyway.....

It is a very interesting concept. What is most important? Individual or community?

Because if we are going to say that flies that touch my filth and then touch you mean that I have violated your rights..........that is a slippery slope. Then I can't have fruit on my counter....you know how the little fruit flies pop up. What if a fly lands on my hands after I have been cleaning my indoor flush toilet, before I wash them? Maybe the only way to make sure flies don't transfer any potential filth is to bomb the entire area with DDT?

Yep, far fetched and crazy.... but it is SUPER easy to land in the crazy zone, as we all know. Which is why I would rather not complain about the flies playing in the neighbor's outhouse and then coming over to my property.

 

[Alaskan]

I know people who make homemade septic tanks and field lines...a shovel, 55 gallon drums, a cutting torch, pvc pipes, rocks, and sand.

Up here we also use derelict vehicles or just logs and rocks.

 

[perchie.girl]

I know people who make homemade septic tanks and field lines...a shovel, 55 gallon drums, a cutting torch, pvc pipes, rocks, and sand.

Its amazing what a teeny sceptic system like that will handle....

My leach field is dying so I am going to have to go with compositng toilet system eventually. I am not going to ask permission.....

deb

 

[LindaB220]

No, it won't help because China is building a new old style coal powered plant every week or so.

It will make no difference at all, other than turtling the US economy.

The problem with "cutting down" is that as the population grows, you're right back where you were, or worse. Either work on keeping populations down, or admit that it is only smoke and mirrors.

Personally, I'm disgusted by the raptor choppers and songbird stewers being promoted as an alternative.

The first, and best, approach to any human caused global warming is to literally eliminate all pronatalist policies.

That means no free school, or any other benefits including cheap medical care or welfare, after the first two children. No tax reductions or subsidies for more than two children. And there should be restrictions for the wealthy as well as the poor on reproduction.

You will hear the screaming and moaning from NYC to SF.

They are doing something about it. GMO's cause fertility problems. Lower the population that way. Bill Gates approved it.

 

[perchie.girl]

Quote:
OK now I have a vision of a VW parked in the spot where my outhouse used to sit.... A toilet seat where the drivers seat was and a roll of TP hanging from the rear view mirror..... Heck it wouldnt blow over in a wind storm either.....

I tell ya I live in the Desert version of Northern Exposure.... Even down to the Bartender with the REally Really Young wife....

deb

 

[The Yakima Kid]

This is a deep discussion.... but here is my take on it. pie charts and graphs only depict the data collected... The first one looks like the US is not the biggest offender


The one below shows us as the worst offender



In both cases the rest of the world also includes all the third world countries.... In order to Reduce consumption of oil World wide.... Everyone has to take part... Everyone.



Another way is to advance solar power.... scientists are also Working with better Solar power collectors. They are currently working on a 3D solar collector which will take sunlight from any direction.

I have to go...

deb

We are back to where I came in.

The "solar collectors" are being deployed, and they kill migrating birds far overhead.

The issue isn't consumption, it is pollution. We are not the most polluting country in the world, we don't even have highest CO2 omissions.

There is a lot said about electric cars - but no one wishes to discuss where the batteries go when they die. Or the manufacturing pollution costs of building them.

The only way to really reduce global oil consumption is to start reducing population by strict anti-natalist policies. No benefits or tax deductions after two children under any circumstances. No free school, no school breakfast, no tax deduction, no medical or insurance deductions - NOTHING.

What always amazes me is that those who refer to living in the developed world as being *offenders* are always distressed when someone suggests removing pro-natalist policies and eliminating immigration. Both of these practices reduce child bearing in practice - for example, by eliminating remittances from immigrants to subsidize larger families in their natal country.

Another thing that amazes me is people who have to have the newest smart phone who don't understand how much pollution is created in making that smart phone. Or they buy synthetic fabric clothes, and buy new ones to follow trends rather than wearing the old ones out. They drive large vehicles and write their checks on recycled paper check blanks. They have air conditioning in dry summer climates! Unclear on the concept doesn't even begin to cover it.

 

[LindaB220]

I know people who make homemade septic tanks and field lines...a shovel, 55 gallon drums, a cutting torch, pvc pipes, rocks, and sand.

When we moved our mobile home to an old spot that I use to have a home on, the electric wouldn't let us hook up until we passed inspection. We got by on a technicality but thought we would have to fork over $6000 for a new septic tank. Whew. A few months of angst.

 

[The Yakima Kid]

LOL.... not me... I love this stuff. But maybe a different discussion list... There are no single solutions... There are always hundreds of ways to solve a problem sometimes it takes several different applications.

WE humans are on the brink of discovery.... Just think about How long have we had computers.... How long have we had gasoline engines..... How long have we had electricity... never mind on how to generate it. Just those things have only been with us what.... at most two hundred years... refering to electricity.

The human race used to double its knowledge every 100 years.... then it was shortened to 25 after world war Two.... and now we are doubling our knowledge every twelve months.... Thats globally...

Back when I got my first computer 1980 ish. It didnt have a hard drive. Good ole IBM 8088. It had two 5.25 floppy drives.... You loaded the operating system on boot up then pulled it out and loaded your software.... the other hard drive was file storage

The biggest hard drive out there was three megabytes and it weighed so much you had to move it with a forklift. I know a computer geek friend got one of the Union Tribunes old computers.... It was the size of a Volkswagen bus. Look at memory now.... I have a 500GB hard drive that is solid state. I wanted a terabyte but had to wait.

We have come so far.... but we as a human race have Aeons to go.... Hopefully we will grow out of this adolescence with maturity and a Proactive atitude.

deb

Sigh.

We are not doubling our knowledge every 22 years; there is no standard agreed upon to measure such a statistic. We do generate a lot of research papers, though.

The ancient Egyptians made batteries for use in electroplating.

The problem with a lot of modern Western thought is that the practitioners dumped Christianity but retained the notion that somehow human beings are inherently evil and are born in sin. There is the totally weird notion - heard over the years from various colleagues - that people are a "cancer on the earth." Once I was riding in a car where a colleague, who was driving, carried on at great length about this issue. When we approached a bridge over a slough, I suggested he could just drive off the bridge and reduce the number of humans. For some reason, this suggestion shocked him - apparently he personally was not a cancer, just everyone else.

 

[The Yakima Kid]

I find it hilarious that the main beneficiaries of the "global warming" issue have been crony capitalists.

Although, the nearly $700,000 spent on the climate change musical "The Great Immensity" had an interesting impact; apparently this musical was sort of the real life cultural equivalent of the "Springtime for Hitler" musical the producer promoted in the Mel Brooks movie, "The Producers."

Only the NY Times had anything good to say about it - essentially they were impressed that it was covering an important political issue. Other critics were far less charitable, and some thought the relationship between the adult hero and the fifteen year old activist was a wee bit awkward.

In any event, it seems "The Great Immensity" had all of the subtlety of a Red Chinese Ballet.

 

[The Yakima Kid]

Deb, I think a one or two dollar gas tax in the States would boost discoveries in that field a bit...

Sometime in the fifties or sixties I think they predicted that computers in the 21st century would only weigh a ton. I wonder how they would have reacted to a iPhone.

There was a comic strip called "Dick Tracy" that foresaw many of the items in daily use today. Chester Gould may have been the greatest futurist of the 20th Century.