Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

GM, Ford, and Chrysler cannot go out of business. They must be bailed out by the governments of the United States of America, and Canada. The catch is, that the governments, the PEOPLE will then TELL the so called “Big 3″ what transportation vehicles they will make. They will make only vehicles that people want, made in North America, that use less gasoline than current models, and ones that last a long time. They will in other words make better vehicles, for more people, and give more people jobs making both the vehicles, and the infrastructure to use them.

Michael Moore told Larry King this dream tonight on CNN. It’s as if he was reading my brain. Maybe he was reading my blog (or Olaf’s). Or maybe he came to the only conclusion that a sensible person could come to if they thought about the current automobile maker crisis in the context of other global problems.

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November 17, 2008 saskboy:
It’s going to hurt to have so many people unemployed, but they were not in a sustainable business because it was run very poorly and with waste and built-in obsolescence in the design of nearly all parts.

The big ones should fail, and the slack will be picked up by entrepreneurs with better cars that get better mileage.

Otherwise the government should nationalize the automobile industries that go under, and use this as an opportunity to standardize the auto-car so that parts are interchangeable on nearly all vehicles, automation of highways and streets gets closer to reality, and a new fleet of three-times more efficient cars can be pushed out to give jobs to those otherwise unemployed in the auto industry. We built a fleet of vehicles that didn’t even exist the decade previous, and they won a war in the early 1940s. And those vehicles had to fly and withstand bullet damage. There’s nothing to stop us from fixing our fleet now, except failed automakers and timid governments.

-Moore said the same thing!

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November 17, 2008 at 3:50 pm Olaf:
Saskboy,
Otherwise the government should nationalize the automobile industries that go under, and use this as an opportunity to standardize the auto-car so that parts are interchangeable on nearly all vehicles, automation of highways and streets gets closer to reality, and a new fleet of three-times more efficient cars can be pushed out to give jobs to those otherwise unemployed in the auto industry.

COMMUNIST!!! GET ‘EM!!!

Seriously though, talk about a major, MAJOR project. Not necessarily a bad idea in theory, but I don’t trust the government to get my mail to me on time let alone pull something like this off.

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4:36 pm saskboy:
Hey, it worked before in WWII, and won the war. If the government launches a “war on waste” or “war on climate change”, they can spend trillions on it, with the support of even most of redneck America (the parts that will support anything if it’s a patriotic war on ____).

Al Gore’s 10 year plan to green America could be at hand if we have tens of millions of unemployed Americans and Canadians for the government to reassign to the task at hand of rebuilding an efficient economy and way of living.

Syncrodox is not convinced my plan would work. He’s entitled to his opinion. I think WWII worked out alright for North America, and the same approach to vehicle making can work again in the War on Credit Crisis. This is the post Credit Crisis world. Credit Crisis changed everything. Americans, and Canadians are ready to accept government owned automakers, and will buy their vehicles when they provide more jobs to more people, and have products more efficient, safe, and affordable than foreign cars. It will give new meaning to the words “public transit”.

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The blogosphere is of course buzzing about the Auto Bailout, obscene wealth at the top, and how the vote is delayed because it might not pass. Some are blaming unions, for what is clearly a management problem. Unions don’t decide that the H3 is the vehicle to take America into the future with.

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More thoughts, mostly on letting nature take its course on a bad business.

A soft ad market is leading Corus radio network to cancel staff Christmas parties (or at least stop sponsoring them). Santa Adler will be making a list of naughty executives after this, you can bet.

Soft ad market? I’ve been contacted twice in the past week by people looking to run ads on my blog. That’s up by about 200% from the month previous ;-)

It seems the financial crisis has now become a holiday crisis. Oh deary me.

7:55 I’m at the U of R for the presentation on organic farming practices. Apparently a UofS professor was on the radio today trying to debunk the coming presentation by Joel Salatin as techniques not possible in Saskatchewan. Joel said, ‘You know what? Some of my neighbours don’t think it’s possible either.’

8:03 A microphone issue was rectified.
Cows can graze, they don’t need to be brought food.
People enslave their children to old practices by purchasing single use infrastructure. (silos)

You can cut lumber in the woods instead of bringing the logs to the mill. (portable miller) The chips can be used for cattle bedding. Bedding gets packed by cows, and won’t compost. The solution is to turn and loosen the bedding.

Pigs - “Will work for corn”. Use “Pigerators” to turn the wood chips used for bedding. Retirement - you eat the pigs! Let the pigs embrace their piggishness.

8:07 Fatter, faster, bigger, cheaper is the goal of industry raised animals. NFL? (Nature weeds the freaks out.)

Eating is a cultural statement. If food is raised without concern for nature, nature will reject us.

“Culture of technocrats.” We all ask HOW. Instead ask Why are we feeding grain to herbivores?

“Manure should be called black gold.” Instead we call it waste.

8:15 Pigs massage the soil.

Open land management:
Moving - to new grass
Mobbed up for predator protection
Mowing - graze less selectively to get fed before some other animals gets the plant
-humans should spend time meditating chewing cud too

Anything from the food establishment is not true. For 40 yeas they said that feeding dead cows to herbivore cows was sound food management. Ooops?

8:26 Joel’s a “beyond organic” farmer, because he’s not ‘certified’ to call himself “organic”.
Organic farming suffers from the appearance that it’s not macho. It sounds more impressive to drive a tractor than to make cows feel better.

Spend money on something that will last $500 years.

- gravity pressurized irrigation used in his operation.
- birds follow herbivores, following cows to sanitize the pasture. Free range chickens.

Industrial agriculture doesn’t want synergy on farms - “They don’t even want people on farms!”
There are twice as many people in prisons as there are on farms in the States.

8:38 Confuse the pathogen world by having multiple animals living in same space on rotation. Rabbits over chickens. Cows and Pigs. Cows can be used to restore vegetation, even though they are historically mismanaged into land destroyers.

-Animals selected on internal organ health, instead of ignoble traits like colour.

-Let good bugs beat bad bugs. No vaccinations needed for chickens of raised well.

Sensually produced food doesn’t stink. Food production should be romantic so children want to be involved!

8:47 Beyond organic farms invite people to see food production. Industrial farms chase people away lest the animals get sick.

550 acres and rent 1000 acres of pasture. There are 4 farms, and 3 were turned down this year.

animals on his farm:
Cows are Heinz 57
pigs bought, 1950s genetics Yorkshires and more
chickens purebred, indigenous breeds, 3 kinds
(not a purist, or would go bankrupt) has to use some industrial breeds.
He’s had a woman ask him how to make a hamburger - a recent vegetarian convert. We’ve lost generational food preparation knowledge. Some people don’t know chickens have bones!

How did he learn all this?
- Grandfather was organic gardener; generational knowledge foundation.
- observes and thinks. Stays out of govt. offices (self described libertarian). Doesn’t own a television.
If you don’t write down your goal into one statement, you won’t attain it.
(HMI Holistic Management inspired mission statement)

9:05 taking more questions:
Over $1M in sales. A farm is a business, have to do more than truck food.
3-5 years to turn damaged land into usable land.
“What’s safe about Coke?” Rules are about market access protection, not “food safety”.
Now we can’t choose what to feed our children. McDonald’s, Monsanto, and Kraft decide what we eat. The ultimate denial of rights is to deny someone the right to choose what food to grow and eat.

The crowd agreed that it’s a modern feudal system. If you have the right to peaceful assembly, but not to eat the fuel to get you there, what good is that right? That’s part of why everything Joel wants to do is illegal. If people had control of their food, the food industry wouldn’t have control and the money they do.

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Several people in attendance were interested in the OLPC laptop that I took with me to live blog the event and show off the Regina Car Share Co-operative’s website.

UPDATE:

The other day I was wondering if it was possible to ship directly from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic without having to sail around South Africa. Today my question was answered when I read this news about pirates capturing over $100,000,000 worth of oil in a tanker.

I’d heard of the Suez Canal before, but I didn’t know what it did, or where it was.

The Internet; fighting geographical ignorance one fact at a time.

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I think it would be mildly interesting if Andrew Scheer became Speaker of the House. It’s been a long run for Peter M., and there’s nothing wrong in giving a new generation a crack at the whip. Besides, Canadians don’t listen to young people nearly enough.

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More reading about decorum.

Driving by the Regina Exhibition Grounds yesterday, I got a shock. I looked up to the sign towering over Lewvan Drive, expecting to see “Ipsco Place”, and was stunned to read “Evraz Place”. *Uhhhhggghhh* (picture Tim Allen in your mind making that confused noise)? What? When did that happen?

Well it happened just a few days ago, even though the sale of Ipsco steel processing happened quite some time ago.

It would be a good time for a poll of the stupidest sports facility names in North America. Of course, I have a history of stadium/park names bugging me. I don’t think this city can honestly handle another name change. Evraz may be the last straw? One can hope anyway.

At least this latest name change might mean that there won’t be confused event-attendees driving around lost 2 kilometers north of the city. Unless they too heard that Ipsco was bought out by Evraz and the Russians.

I’ve been cleaning my place out of some of the accumulation collected over a lifetime. I identified about 50 unwanted greeting cards, which have stayed with me somehow over the last decades. I decided to put a bag of them on usedregina.com in case they’d be of use for someone making a craft project. Delighted, I got a response, and asked them to pick up the cards Friday.

A man, Seong, appeared asking about the cards, which was my first surprise because I was expecting a woman to be more interested in used greeting cards. Don’t ask me why, but I have a gender bias when it comes to who I think about are more interested in crafts. Then he had an intriguing additional request to receiving free used greeting cards. He wanted to interview me and get my thoughts and feelings about what some of the cards meant to me.

Seong is a teacher from South Korea, working on a project to learn more about Canadian society. What blogger could turn down an interview request like that?

My title is an obvious homage to “Not Waiting for the Asteroid” a recurring title on SDA. In those posts, Kate gives an example of how the Main Stream Media lags behind her blog, and blogs in general, and look like dinosaurs.

The National Post, which costs more than a share in CanWest Global, is an often reviled newspaper distributed across Canada for the enjoyment of people who prefer to read right wing bias. It’s only saving grace in my eyes is that it has a nation wide network of “local” papers to pull stories from, giving it a more national appeal than the Globe and Mail. (Regina, Saskatoon, and Moose Jaw (I think) are all served by CanWest Global ownership.)

I heard on the radio Thursday morning that the National Post and chain is in trouble, and is looking to fire people. One writer they didn’t get to fire, Marsden, is demonstrating her value to the newspaper/media world.

You may want to avert your eyes:
Continue Reading »

- File photo of Wascana Lake in Regina, SK

What’s a little toxicity in a little bit of water? What’s a lot in a lot? No biggie, right? Or is it?

I don’t post every press release that comes my way, but I found this one interesting for a number of reasons. One of them is that a PC MPP is walking in support of blocking the dump, after in the past having supported it.

I hope they find one of Canada’s “empty wildernesses” that only Mararget Wente knows the location of. That’s where Simcoe should have their new dump.

November 12, 2008
‘Walk for Water’ seeks to stop Tiny Township’s Dumpsite 41 cold

Time may be running out for the now-famous Tiny Township aquifer that spouts some of Canada’s - and the world’s - purest water. But the groundwater and springs won’t be forsaken without a passionate fight by Canada’s top water expert and a dedicated group of local politicians,
First Nations activists, and never-say-die citizens. They want to convince Simcoe County Council to reverse its decision to plant garbage Dumpsite 41 right on top of it.

Maude Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians, author of the best-selling book, Blue Covenant, and recently appointed senior adviser to the United Nations on water issues, is aghast at the irony: “Water, in my opinion, is the single most important environmental and human-rights threat of our time, and while millions around the world are dying and going thirsty, Simcoe County is about to violate this unique and precious Canadian aquifer.”

Danny Beaton, a Mohawk elder and environmentalist, and Stephen Ogden, a citizen activist from Tiny Township and 25-year veteran of the battle to stop Dumpsite 41, are spearheading a walk from Ogden’s farm to Queen’s Park, starting this Friday morning and arriving in Toronto November 21.
Their ‘Walk For Water: Stop Dumpsite 41 Now!’ will appeal to county councillors in Midhurst to overturn their razor-thin 16-15 decision in favour of the dump. They’ll gather support as they travel south in their bid to stop the landfill, proceeding to Barrie, and eventually south on Highway 11/Yonge Street to Toronto, asking Ontarians they meet to take action to stop the dump.

Two generations of local citizens have championed the preservation of this Tiny Township resource and managed to hold off the building of Dumpsite 41 for nearly 30 years. Stephen Ogden originally became involved in the Site 41 issue in 1985. “At that time the proponent of the site had hired a lawyer to make offers to purchase to several nearby landowners without releasing critical information that they were looking to build a dump. From this information and evidence in the Environmental
Assessments of 1989, we know with certainty that any piece of property in south Tiny Township would have become the preferred site for the proposed landfill,” Ogden states.

Simcoe County approved the building of Site 41, despite having a 25 year capacity at its current facilities, and arguably up to 40 years, given recent upgrades to recycling, and with the introduction of a source separated organics program, says Ray Millar, chair of the Site 41 Monitoring Committee in Tiny Township.

Preparation for the site has already begun with the installation of fences, and the construction of the storm water management pond. “The only thing stopping waste cell development at the site at this moment - aside from impending winter weather - is the signing of the ‘Permit to Take Water’ (PTTW), a delegated responsibility under the jurisdiction of a Ministry of the Environment director,” Millar explains.

Danny Beaton, the Mohawk activist with roots at Six Nations in Brantford, is determined to stop the dump as he drums his way to Toronto. “We must not allow the potential destruction of one of the most
pristine water supplies anywhere - the Alliston Aquifer - which runs beneath the proposed Site 41 landfill. To dig out the pit needed to construct the dump may require the pumping out of 225 million litres or more of pristine water. Unless this de-watering is done, the excavated pit, much like the lake in Adams Mine, will become a pond.”

Beaton, who often stops for water from the site en route to and from his summer camp, describes the Walk for Water as “a prayer and song to our Mother the Earth, whose lifeblood is water.”

Also walking with Beaton and Ogden will be Progressive Conservative MPP Garfield Dunlop, a former county councillor who was a proponent of Site 41 until the Walkerton water tragedy struck in 2000, a year after he was elected MPP for Simcoe North.

The township’s opposition to Dumpsite 41 includes citizens of all ages - children at Bayfield School who presented the issue at an environmental youth summit in Buffalo, New York this past May, women who attended the hearings daily on Site 41 to support Ogden, farmers, townsfolk, and other local politicians. Also on board is Ogden’s 92-year-old church choir director who drove to his farm adjacent to the water site this past Sunday to donate $100.00 for the walk. “This has gone on so long,”
Ogden says, “a whole history of people, some of whom have died since the struggle began, have stood by the belief that this is simply wrong, and it’s just not necessary.”

The Walk for Water: Stop Dumpsite 41 commences with a Mohawk sunrise ceremony at 8:00 a.m. Friday, November 14th at the Ogden Farm, 1249 Marshall Road, at Baseline Road, Tiny Township, proceeds to the County of Simcoe Administration Centre, 1110 Highway 26, Midhurst (anticipated
arrival 3:30 to 4:00 pm) for the presentation of a ‘Stop Site 41′ letter & gift of water to county councilors, then - over the course of the next seven days - to Barrie, Stroud, Bradford, Aurora, Richmond Hill, York Mills (Toronto) and Queen’s Park, 12 noon, Friday November 21st.

For more information:
Stephen Ogden: 705-543-1470 (Cell)…
email: stephenogdenATTTTTsympatico.ca

If you don’t know how to fix it, for goodness sake, don’t break it!

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Hat tip to Sandra and Kathleen