Random thoughts.

A brain dump of random thoughts bouncing through my head.

The joys of ADD squirrel!

So I had a doctor's appointment today & on the way home I stopped at a roadside stand run by the Amish. Good people. Good food grown without chemicals and at a reasonable price. What I paid $13 for would have cost me much more at the store and how much of it would have gone to the farmers that grew the food? How much of the price I would have paid have gone to Wall Street? And granted, $1.50 for 6 cookies is a little steep. But look at those boxes of cookies on the store shelves and what is in them. If you can't pronounce it, should you be eating it?

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My fried lives in Cattaraugus County. His big recent thrill was through his public library. Remember that place? That building with books that people pretty much ignore now? Except for the fact that studies show that what you read in a book stays in your brain longer than anything you read on-line or on a tablet or other device. So pick up a book and remember something. Any wonder why computers are being used in schools and why kids suck on tests? Could it be the technology?

Back to the library story – The library system that the library belongs to worked out a deal with a bunch of local museums. Sign out a pass and receive free admission to a local museum. So he went to the Seneca Museum in Salamanca. Spent a couple of hours there and really enjoyed it. Nice little place that will be expanding in the future. They are building a new museum site that will have an actual long house and potentially a small village. He can't keep quiet about this trip. There are other places he wants to go to as well. And the Seneca Museum is having a festival around Labor Day. That and a ton of fall workshops and talks. Every museum has a niche and a specialty. Stop in and see what your local museum is doing.

So, check out your local library. See what they have to offer that the news media isn't telling you about. I don't even think this is on their web site. I'll have to check. After that, I'll have to check out the book sale his library is having. They can have some real jems and at a good price too.

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Another friend saved a kitten that was pretty much abandoned by its mother – the kitten had pneumonia. He took it to a cat shelter and paid them to nurse it back to health. He gets it tomorrow. He already has 4 cats. This makes 5. If he doesn't get the kitten fixed, he'll be broke. The kitten is male, his other cats are all female.

He received grief for saving the kitten. After all, look at all the starving children in America. Or here in WNY? His comeback is a classic: And US foreign policy during the 1990's led to the deaths of 500,000 (that's half a million) Iraqi children. This was strict US via the UN imposed controls on imports of food and medicine. We starved them to death. How do you feel about that? Boy do they walk away fast. I think they got more exercise trying to get away from him than from running off their mouths. I imagine he could extrapolate that out to Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and the list goes on.

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Another friend is getting into First Nations issues. The treaty rights of the First Nations peoples and the US (and Canadian) governments' willful violation and abrogation of these treaties. He has a button that he wears on his backpack “Break a Treaty – Break the Law.” People on the street seem to support it. Now if we could only get the government to. Actually the treaty isn't broken, it's only been violated. If it's broken, then the government has no obligation to abide by it. So do we need to stop talking about broken treaties and start making a stink about treaty violations?

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I like how the Buffalo News covers the First Nations opposition to the North Dakota pipeline. Specifically the Sioux Tribes. And then tries to undermine their claims despite science that shows pipelines to be as dangerous as rail or trucks. How come we never hear about local opposition to pipelines in the first section of the newspaper?

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Farmers markets are interesting places to go. It's nice to meet the farmers and get a better price for the food. And I see more selection, variety of things. I was driving through the south towns and ran into a small market in Franklinville. A few vendors. More hot peppers than I see at stores in Buffalo. And you can smell the hot. I saw squashes that I have never seen before. One looked like an alien octopus from a bad sci-fi flick. Evidently you boil it, saute onions in butter (which you could also buy at this market), toss them together and it is supposedly quite tasty. And local BBQ sauce with no corn syrup. I don't understand the anchovies in it though. Must be a family recipe. And real maple syrup. Not that chemistry experiment that sits on store shelves. If I eat a slice of the blueberry pie that I bought I won't go to sleep tonight. But that Amish soap made with goats milk is supposedly incredible and lasts very long. I'll have to let you know how long.

Thus ends the ramblings.

And my mind is clear.

Thank you. Good Night. And Good Luck.

Bad luck sucks.

Retiring the Redskins

And there are people in Lackawana still arguing that the “Redskins” name should be kept.

Seriously?

It's a racist term along the lines of the N-word.

It's the equivalent of calling people of Polish descent Polacks.

And Italians Degos or Wops.

And Germans Nazis.

And Hispanics Spics, Gringos, or wet backs,

And Chinese Chinks.

And Japanese Japs.

And Jews Kikes.

And Christans Bible Thumpers or Holy Rollers. (You get a choice there.)

And Muslims/people of Arabic descent Towel Heads.

And Africans the N-word.

And so on.

Every nationality and belief system has a derogatory name that goes with it.

For the First Nations peoples it happens to be Redskin.

There's not much to write on this topic other than these people need to move on.

The name has been changed and let it go.

Then again, a friend of mine from long ago had a joke about the name of Lackawana.

He called the city Lack of Wanna.

Some people just don't want to move on.

They want to live in an idealized past that never existed.

Just because someone doesn't say that something hurts doesn't mean that it doesn't.

Then again, First Nations people have been saying that for a long time.

We were never listening.

It is time to retire the Redskins name. Across the board and permanently.

Either that or change the name of every sports team in a community into a derogatory name for that community.

Your choice.

The Life of Nuclear

If you ever get a chance to see Monty Python's “The Life of Brian” - do so. It's hilarious. I know Christians that can do portions of the movie by heart and laugh with the movie.

There's one point in the movie where an agitator asks the question, “What have the Romans ever done for us?” He's a Jewish zealot trying to recruit followers for the People's Front of Judea.

After a bit one person mentions the roads. Another mentions the aqueducts. Yet another adds something else. And so on.

And the agitator goes off stating basically if they ignore all the good things that the Romans have done, what have they done? Only bad things. Like crucifixions.

Nuclear power advocates are trying to play the same game. Slightly in reverse though.

After all, given climate change and global warming, nuclear power is good because it has no emissions like coal, oil, and gas.

Well, there is the environmental damage it causes in the areas where the uranium is mined. After all, the piles of debris are radioactive and contaminate the water, land, and air. And then there are the cancer rates for the miners (100%) and elevated risks for the communities that live around and down stream from the mines.

OK. If you ignore the environmental devastation at the mining sites.

And the fact that many of the mining sites are on lands owned by First Nations peoples and that the government basically strong arms the leaders or gets the leadership to sell out so that the uranium cam be mined.

OK. If you ignore the environmental damage and the violations against the First Nations peoples land rights, it is a good source of energy that has no emissions.

Except for the fact that it needs to go by truck to the refining sites and there are no electric trucks to transport it, so the companies use diesel and gas powered trucks to get the uranium to the sites. And those trucks spew greenhouse gases like you wouldn't believe into the atmosphere.

OK. If you ignore the environmental damage, treaty violations, and greenhouse gas emissions from the trucks, it's an environmentally friendly power source that we can use to avert climate change.

Well, there is the refinement process that produces nuclear waste that we don't have any idea what we can do with and it is toxic for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. That's not good. We're still dealing with waste from World War II. And now we have more from the processing. And all the driving that the workers do to get to the plants to work. Most don't use electric cars. They use gas and diesel.

OK. Let's ignore the radioactive waste all together – from mining and production, the greenhouse gases from the transportation of uranium and the workers, and the treaty violations. It's still a zero emissions energy source.

There is the problem of the plants being built. Those workers drive around. Some use trucks that run on diesel.

Fine. Fine. Fine. We'll lump them in with the other exhaust gases.

And the fact that the power plants take 15 years or more to build. And they are always over budget. Between 400% and 1100%. At least. That's a long time to wait.

And then there are the cancer rates of the people that live around the plants. It's always the poor people that have the plants built near them.

Fine. Set aside all the treaty violations, environmental degradation, and time factors. And the costs – both in money and medical issues. Nuclear energy is a zero emissions energy source that we can use.

But climate change and global warming is happening now. We can't wait 15 years for plants to be built.

So why don't we just take all the money that the nuclear energy industry wants to waste on power plants and put it into solar, wind, and water? Portugal just went four days without needing to use carbon based energy. Everything went on wind and solar. Locally produced or piped around.

And there are parts of Texas that produce so much wind energy that their electric meters stop at night and the people get free electricity.

The First Nations peoples of the Plains have it figured that if they put up turbines on their treaty territories they could provide the US with ~70% of its electricity needs. Those Rocky Mountains always produce wind. Good downslope there.

And Scandinavia produces energy using turbines under water that run on the tides. The tides are always going in or out. That's electricity 24-7.

So, why do we need nuclear?

Um…..

I don't have a song written that works along the lines of the “People's Front of Judea.”

It is time we stopped nuclear in its tracks and said “No” to the wrong “green” energy.

The only green is the green going to the 1% and Wall Street.

And it's all coming out of our pockets.

Update: 

Crap.

I forgot to mention 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the possibility of other nuclear mishaps and the problems related to them.

Then again, if we put wind turbines in front of the nuclear advocates' mouthes we'd have 24-7 energy and we wouldn't have to worry about planes, birds, and other problems…..