In article ,
"songbird" wrote:

Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
...
The better for what? question about my organic meal can of
course be
answered in a much less selfish way: Is it better for the
environment?
Better for the farmers who grew it? Better for the public
health? For
the taxpayer? The answer to all three questions is an
(almost)
unqualified yes. To grow the plants and animals that made up
my
meal,
no pesti- cides found their way into any farmworker's
bloodstream, no
nitrogen runoff or growth hormones seeped into the watershed,
no
soils were poisoned, no antibiotics were squandered, no
subsidy
checks were written. If the high price of my all-organic meal
is
weighed against the comparatively low price it exacted from
the
larger world, as it should be, it begins to look, at least in
karmic
terms, like a real bargain.

i'd be sure that at least one of those farmer's
children were on birth control.

i love science, but we have a long ways to go
before we have the complete picture of this
understood.

i wouldn't be surprised to find out at how
much of what we consider good gardening
now will be proved false in the next 50 years.

i remain a wide-eyed optimist with cynically
rose colored glasses.

True, we understood mega-nutrients: protein, carbohydrates, and
fats,
but that wasn't enough.
Now we understand micronutrients: vitamins, but that isn't
enough.
Will bioflavonoids be it, or will that not be enough as well?

actually, what i am wondering more and more
about is while i'm sure that some of the things
that plants make are ok for us, many other
substances are either going to be somewhat
toxic or neutral and the end result is that the liver
is the primary sorting ground. so any nutritional
studies which do not analyze long term liver
function/toxicity are basically crap.

all these chemicals that plants make to defend
themselves from predators (including herbivores/
omnivores i.e. us) at some level will be doing
some damage and perhaps organic gardening
which increases certain chemicals may be increasing
the burden on the liver. we really are not very far
along in this sort of "entire system" analysis when it
comes to all the chemicals the body can ingest
and the waste products and how they are transported
and etc... some things are stored in fats and thus in
the fatty cells in the body. some things come out of
the fats given certain diets and such, etc. all of this
is not really completely understood either.

take it all in combination and we are many years
from "knowledge" in the sense of completeness, but
at least we are on the way if we don't manage to do
ourselves in first. it's a race IMO. considering what
we knew a hundred years ago we've made a lot of
progress, but much of what we know now is still
likely to be flat out wrong. i trust science to figure
it out eventually, i do not trust "organic religion" any
more than i trusted "atkins diet religion" when that
became a craze.


songbird

Quite a little rant. As far as organic foods are concerned, that is what
humanity has been eating since the Garden of Eden to 1945. If that is
insufficient, then it is a wonder that we are still here. Our liver is
indeed here to protect us from our mistakes, has our entire history been
a mistake?

Organic religion? Shirley, you jest. We are only talking about
traditional food, grown in traditional ways. Does that aspire to the
level of a cult?

Contemporary, commercial agriculture kills top soil, kills soil ecology,
pollutes ground water, and creates ocean dead zones around the mouthes
of rivers. Contemporary, commercial agriculture requires more than a
calorie of fossil fuel for each calorie of food. Organic (traditional)
agriculture produces 2+ calories for each calorie of input.
Contemporary, commercial agriculture fills your body with chemicals that
your liver never saw before, much less has developed any way of dealing
with.

With corporations now funding large segments of our underfunded higher
education, don't be surprised if scientists can't get funding for
nutritional studies that are very expensive to run. Even now, industry
is fighting doing toxicological studies of chemicals that that were
grand fathered into our food delivery system.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=chemical-controls
April 2010, Scientific American
p. 30
Chemical Controls
Congress needs to give federal agencies greater authority to test and
regulate chemicals

People seem to thrive on traditional food. It is only when they take up
western food that they get sick. One of the reasons that wheat was
separated from its germ is because with only the starch and none of its
nutrition, white flour attracts fewer pests. Stay away from processed
foods (empty calories of sugar, white flour, and white rice), and you'll
be healthier. The Inuit didn't have diabetes, until they started eating
from trading posts. Colonial doctors reported little i the way of
diabetes, cancer, or high blood pressure, until the introduction of the
"Western" diet. Sugar consumption (IIRC) has gone from 15 lbs/year in
1840 to approximately 170 lbs/year at present in "western" cultures.
But, hey, it's your organism, who am I to tell you not to abuse it?

Especially, when the University of California
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16717
and
Stanford University
http://academicearth.org/lectures/battle-of-the-diets
can say it much more eloquently and with more authority than I can.

Don't get me wrong, even traditional organic agriculture isn't perfect.
Far from it,
http://www.environnement.ens.fr/pers.../mistake_jared
_diamond.pdf

And as you work on your grapevine, or worrying about uncontrolled
immigration, remember that by 2050, there will be 9 billion people on
this planet with us, and 12 billion by 2067. And we have already
exceeded the Earth's carrying capacity for us.

We can't even figure out what to do with a half-century's total
production of over a 1 billion tons of plastic that is floating around
in the oceans. It includes hundreds of different plastics, with untold
permutations involving added plasticizers, opacifiers, colors, fillers,
strengtheners, and light stabilizers. The longevity of each can vary
enormously. Thus far, none has disappeared.

What did this mean for the ocean, the ecosystem, the future? Would its
chemical constituents or additives ‹ for instance, colorants such as
metallic copper ‹ concentrate as they ascended the food chain, and alter
evolution?

The use of aggressively toxic polychlorinated biphenyls‹PCBs‹to make
plastics more pliable had been banned since 1970; among other hazards,
PCBs were known to promote hor-
monal havoc such as hermaphroditic fish and polar bears. Like
time-release capsules, pre-1970 plastic flotsam will gradually leak PCBs
into the ocean for centuries. But, as Takada also discovered,
free-floating toxins from all kinds of sources‹copy paper, automobile
grease, coolant fluids, old fluorescent tubes, and infamous discharges
by General Electric and Monsanto plants directly into streams and
rivers‹readily stick to the surfaces of free-floating plastic.

One study directly correlated ingested plastics with PCBs in the fat
tissue of puffins. The astonishing part was the amount. Takada aad his
colleagues found that plastic pellets that the birds ate concentrate
poisons to levels as high as 1 million times their normal occurrence in
seawater.

The World Without Us (Paperback)
by Alan Weisman
POLYMERS ARE FOREVER / 151
http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-...2427905/ref=sr
_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274206221&sr=1-1

And we want to build more nuclear reactors ;O)
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg
http://radwisdom.com/essays/this-is-your-brain/

Billy wrote:
....
Quite a little rant. As far as organic foods are concerned,
that is
what
humanity has been eating since the Garden of Eden to 1945. If
that is
insufficient, then it is a wonder that we are still here. Our
liver is
indeed here to protect us from our mistakes, has our entire
history
been
a mistake?

Organic religion? Shirley, you jest. We are only talking about
traditional food, grown in traditional ways. Does that aspire
to the
level of a cult?

some people talk about it with that gleem in
their eyes which removes all doubt that this
is _The True and Only Way_ to grow things.

alas, science will continue to show that
there will be even better ways of doing
things, given time, evolution is not optimized.



Contemporary, commercial agriculture kills top soil, kills soil
ecology,

have you read anything about no-till practices?

i'm not a contemporary farm practices apologist,
i just don't see how we get out of the current fix
without food riots and mass starvation and many
other turmoils.


pollutes ground water, and creates ocean dead zones around the
mouthes
of rivers.

i think organic farms can also pollute ground water
and certainly do contribute to nutrients in the rivers
thus the dead zones. i think there is a major problem
there but i think it is also contributed to heavily by
many other practices which are not agricultural
(lawns being one of them, massive parking lots/paving,
ditching, drainage not filtered through wetlands,
waste processing plants, etc). i don't think it correct to
put that sort of thing wholly on the plates of the
non-organic farmers.


Contemporary, commercial agriculture requires more than a
calorie of fossil fuel for each calorie of food. Organic
(traditional)
agriculture produces 2+ calories for each calorie of input.

where are you getting this calorie amount from?
from what i know, organic farming is more
labor intensive, so will require more people
to grow the things consumed. which is good
for employment, but does not help reduce
the pressure on the entire planet's ecosystem.

i do agree that the petrochemical system
currently in place is going to peter out
eventually, it has to, there isn't an infinite
supply of oil. there isn't an infinite supply
of anything on this planet, we really need
to be investing in figuring out how to survive
in smaller systems and what is needed
to thrive there.


Contemporary, commercial agriculture fills your body with
chemicals
that
your liver never saw before, much less has developed any way of
dealing
with.

somewhat true, and these are greatly troubling
to me also. Dioxins being a local trouble (read
about the dioxin contamination of the
Tittabawassee River and the Saginaw River
sometime).

i'm also greatly troubled by the general
neglect of understanding of what happens
to things after we are done with them.
including things like BC meds, all those
plastics (which you speak about below
and i agree with that they are trouble) which
act as long term sources of pollutants,
landfills, etc.


With corporations now funding large segments of our underfunded
higher
education, don't be surprised if scientists can't get funding
for
nutritional studies that are very expensive to run. Even now,
industry
is fighting doing toxicological studies of chemicals that that
were
grand fathered into our food delivery system.

i know, that is horrible and for
certain should require safety studies,
even if done for one item per company
per season it's not that terrible a
thing to ask. and actually if you have
many companies using the compound
in question they could all contribute
to the study based upon how much
they use. seems fair and the cost
gets passed on to consumers anyways
in one form or another eventually...
there's no real way to avoid the
price of ignorance even if most
people do not really want the
slightly higher prices that knowledge
would cost it's a basic science
question that eventually will have to
be addressed, it doesn't matter
what the currency is used to
pay for it, the ultimate currency is
human time and wasted or damaged
lives/ecosystems/other organisms, etc.

i read about current practices
in meat processing and testing and
decide to not eat much ground meat
as a result. there's no way i want
meat that has been treated with
ammonia to kill the microbes put
back into the mix (i thought that
was what pigs were for ). and
actually i try to eat less meat as i
consider it fairly "expensive" when
it comes to the environment. as
an omnivore it's a part of the total
feedbag and i like a good burger
or steak once in a while, but i know
some people who eat that way
every day... um, not for me...


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=chemical-controls
April 2010, Scientific American
p. 30
Chemical Controls
Congress needs to give federal agencies greater authority to
test and
regulate chemicals

People seem to thrive on traditional food. It is only when they
take
up
western food that they get sick.

again, not entirely true, before modern
methods came along people died from
malnutrition and food borne diseases or
just didn't make it to old age where such
things as heart disease and diabetes tend
to show up more and more.

when i want to amuse myself i think
that i really wasn't meant to live past
40 and should have been food for a
saber tooth tiger.


One of the reasons that wheat was
separated from its germ is because with only the starch and
none of
its
nutrition, white flour attracts fewer pests. Stay away from
processed
foods (empty calories of sugar, white flour, and white rice),
and
you'll
be healthier. The Inuit didn't have diabetes, until they
started
eating
from trading posts. Colonial doctors reported little i the way
of
diabetes, cancer, or high blood pressure,

heh, a lot of people just died earlier than they
do now, and much that people used to die of
isn't accurately known or reported. there are
still troubles in knowing even now. this is a
continuing issue of privacy vs. community
health and what science needs to know to
advance understanding. not easy things to
resolve.


until the introduction of
the "Western" diet. Sugar consumption (IIRC) has gone from 15
lbs/year in 1840 to approximately 170 lbs/year at present in
"western" cultures.
But, hey, it's your organism, who am I to tell you not to abuse
it?

i'm offline at the moment so i cannot follow links... however,
some of what you write above is simply not true. modern
food science and as a result changes in agricultural
practices has reduced toxicity of certain things and i'm
glad for that (being that peanut butter is something i like
to eat on a regular basis i'm glad to know it's produced
to reduce the toxins that can otherwise accumulate). also
that is true for many grain crops that used to have much
higher fungal troubles and the resulting toxins... not that
this is all right, but i think it has helped in some ways.

i agree that the overprocessing and such is not good,
and i eat myself to avoid some of the things you mention
but not completely as certain tastes, textures and
end products (in baking and candy making) just aren't
right when done with whole grain flours or unrefined
sugars.

moderation being the key there (omnivore means
eat a variety of things, physiology says eat more
plant than animal things, climate and physical exercise
means certain amounts of calories are needed and
sometimes you have to have dense sources of nutrients
just to survive, but most people these days do not
need as much as they are getting which is obvious).


Especially, when the University of California
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16717
and
Stanford University
http://academicearth.org/lectures/battle-of-the-diets
can say it much more eloquently and with more authority than I
can.

Don't get me wrong, even traditional organic agriculture isn't
perfect.
Far from it,
http://www.environnement.ens.fr/pers.../mistake_jared
_diamond.pdf

And as you work on your grapevine, or worrying about
uncontrolled
immigration, remember that by 2050, there will be 9 billion
people on
this planet with us, and 12 billion by 2067. And we have
already
exceeded the Earth's carrying capacity for us.

oh believe me i'm already knowing of
that. it's only the petrochemicals which
are feeding a lot of people now, when
they start becoming scarce the food riots
are going to be "interesting". my personal
choice to not have children and to drive
as little as possible a very fuel efficient
car is what i could do to make a difference.
i try to make other differences in not
using a lot of fertilizers, in trying to
soak up or filter runoff before it hits the
ditches. i'm a big fan of river restorations
and letting the rivers flood again where
they used to go, restoring wetlands,
stopping the spraying of nerve poisons
for insect controls, etc.

i like organic farming, i like working
with the world around me instead of
having to fight it, but at the moment i'm
also having to live in a world with values
almost 180 degrees from my own so
somethings i must bend around as i
can.


We can't even figure out what to do with a half-century's total
production of over a 1 billion tons of plastic that is floating
around
in the oceans. It includes hundreds of different plastics, with
untold
permutations involving added plasticizers, opacifiers, colors,
fillers,
strengtheners, and light stabilizers. The longevity of each can
vary
enormously. Thus far, none has disappeared.

some of it has been incorporated in reefs.
(one of my interests has been coral reef
oceanography/biology/nutrient cycling).


What did this mean for the ocean, the ecosystem, the future?
Would its
chemical constituents or additives for instance, colorants
such as
metallic copper concentrate as they ascended the food chain,
and
alter
evolution?

raw copper is really tough on marine
critters. most of it gets bound in one
way or another before it gets to the
oceans.


The use of aggressively toxic polychlorinated biphenyls
plastics
more pliable had been banned since 1970; among other hazards,
PCBs
were known to promote hor-
monal havoc such as hermaphroditic fish and polar bears. Like
time-release capsules, pre-1970 plastic flotsam will gradually
leak
PCBs
into the ocean for centuries. But, as Takada also discovered,
free-floating toxins from all kinds of sources grease,
coolant
fluids, old fluorescent tubes, and infamous discharges
by General Electric and Monsanto plants directly into streams
and
rivers
One study directly correlated ingested plastics with PCBs in
the fat
tissue of puffins. The astonishing part was the amount. Takada
aad his
colleagues found that plastic pellets that the birds ate
concentrate
poisons to levels as high as 1 million times their normal
occurrence
in
seawater.

yep, it's going to take it's toll one
way or another. i'm glad we
recycle plastics here. until we
did i was not buying certain
products because i objected
to the packaging.

mercury loading is troublesome
too from coal burning (among other
things). ok, this we must skip for
now. my toxic metal knowledge is
limited to lead, murkery, copper
and some of the radioactives.


The World Without Us (Paperback)
by Alan Weisman
POLYMERS ARE FOREVER / 151
http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-...2427905/ref=sr
_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274206221&sr=1-1

And we want to build more nuclear reactors ;O)

designed right and run right i'll take
them over coal/oil any time, but my
preference is more towards solar and
wind and conservation measures.
the big trouble with the wastes is a
farce, they could be disposed in a
way which the earth would normally
cycle them (reprocess, what's left
could be encased in heavy glass,
steel, lead, etc. then dropped into a
continental subduction zone which
would take it back into the mantle).

in the end we gotta get a move on
learning how to live in space and
that has a certain time frame that it
has to happen by or we're just another
fossil in the record...

a few good blasts from a bunch
of volcanoes and we're seriously
in trouble worldwide within two
years... in my other moments
of wondering what kind of
people i live among it amazes
me how many really just don't
care about the long term future
of the planet and the means
by which we can get moving towards
other planets... optimally i would
like to have that happen when we
know what it takes to live in a
relatively closed system without
damaging ourselves in the process...
but if push comes to shove i know
what bit of the cosmic ark i'd
want to be on.

it is going to take a large
and organised system of
production to get that to happen
which means corporations or
government agencies and all
the foibles of human nature
that come along with such
groupings. at least science
has ways of understanding and
helping all around. i think
organic means of production will
be a part of that too, but there
will also be industrial processes
too. we're just too far past the
carrying capacity (as you say and
i agree with) to go back short of
cataclysm or a real serious long
range effort to gradually reduce
populations... i don't see that
happening. people want to have
babies, they want children to
take care of them when they
grow older, they want workers
to pay taxes so they can fund their
pet projects (safety studies,
nutritional studies, health studies,
space science and exploration ) hee

oh, i feel bad that i didn't
speak about ocean acidification.
as that is a basic change that
will have long range effects and
we're basically ignoring it by
pumping all the carbon dioxide
into the air... organic gardening
is not going to fix that because
organic gardening aims to recycle
nutrients not sequester carbon
dioxide. somehow that has to
be addressed and fairly immediately
and unfortunately it's not. people
are still driving SUVs even after
the oil platform spill and all the
havoc that is going to cause... *sigh*

if only i were king... i think that is
why your .sig is always amusing to me.

consider this:

humans are an ecological system's
response to limited and finite resources...
we are the great innoculators, the
means of dispersal and of course
destruction if we screw up. oops.

ok, good night, it's been fun...


songbird

You have some interesting things to say and you have clearly thought about
them but you do yourself a disservice in your presentation.

Your postings are often made up of very long one-sentence paragraphs all in
lower case. You may think that messy old usenet doesn't require your finger
to ever hit the full stop or the shift key but we will read more and skip
less if you employ them. May I also suggest that you adjust the line length
of your newsreader as it wraps lines rather short, which is hardly good for
your text but it mangles the quotes because they are then chopped twice.

David

David Hare-Scott wrote:
You have some interesting things to say and you have clearly thought
about them but you do yourself a disservice in your presentation.

your attention is appreciated,
your responses read if i'm still
alive to press the key or click the
mouse, but i'm unlikely to change
my writing style to your satisfaction.

considering much is wandering
OT of r.g.e. i'm quite happy to
drop much of it.


Your postings are often made up of very long one-sentence paragraphs
all in lower case.

grammar takes a backseat
and howls to the music of
wurlds colliding.

her knickers about her
sneeze her shoes in a
bundle and (to be true
to this group) a rhubarb
pie on the dash.

....

more seriously, words and ideas
first, am i clear enough that you
understand what i'm aiming at?
or if i am confusing, you can ask
questions and we can have a
conversation (instead of throwing
links back and forth as seems to
be what is happening to usenet
these days).

paragraphs are for formal
writing, this isn't that kind of
writing. i'm here to have fun
and talk, not write papers for
publication. some of my aim
is to be entertaining and playful
while also being challenging.


You may think that messy old usenet doesn't
require your finger to ever hit the full stop or the shift key but we
will read more and skip less if you employ them.

i like being little. i am keeping my
ego on a leash, don't encourage me
to get all formalic like the big ants in
the amazon do. they scare the shit
outta me, always marching, always
eating, and oy veh the smell!


May I also suggest
that you adjust the line length of your newsreader as it wraps lines
rather short, which is hardly good for your text but it mangles the
quotes because they are then chopped twice.

oh, ok, i didn't notice i'd chopped at 65 instead of 72,
i've now adjusted it upwards. i'm still testing out my
linux side setup for slrn so as soon as i get that working
the way i like it i will be switching newsreaders... at
this rate it will be a few months yet. i'm in the middle
of too many projects and gardening season is on.

peace and good evening to all,


songbird

songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
You have some interesting things to say and you have clearly thought
about them but you do yourself a disservice in your presentation.

your attention is appreciated,
your responses read if i'm still
alive to press the key or click the
mouse, but i'm unlikely to change
my writing style to your satisfaction.


I am not the one who should be satisfied with what you type. I only point
out the problems I see in case you didn't realise they were there. If you
know already and don't care there is nothing I can do about it.

considering much is wandering
OT of r.g.e. i'm quite happy to
drop much of it.


Your postings are often made up of very long one-sentence paragraphs
all in lower case.

grammar takes a backseat
and howls to the music of
wurlds colliding.


Your grammar is fine, it's the layout that is the issue.

her knickers about her
sneeze her shoes in a
bundle and (to be true
to this group) a rhubarb
pie on the dash.

...

more seriously, words and ideas
first, am i clear enough that you
understand what i'm aiming at?

Yes you are clear. If you can achieve clarity why not ease as well?

or if i am confusing, you can ask
questions and we can have a
conversation (instead of throwing
links back and forth as seems to
be what is happening to usenet
these days).

paragraphs are for formal
writing, this isn't that kind of
writing.

Sorry no, paragraphs are for readability as is sentence length or having
discernible sentences at all. The way the words appear on the page
determines how easily they are read because (except for very slow readers)
we read in chunks of words.

i'm here to have fun
and talk, not write papers for
publication. some of my aim
is to be entertaining and playful
while also being challenging.


Good. Why does that exclude ease of reading?


You may think that messy old usenet doesn't
require your finger to ever hit the full stop or the shift key but we
will read more and skip less if you employ them.

i like being little. i am keeping my
ego on a leash, don't encourage me
to get all formalic like the big ants in
the amazon do. they scare the shit
outta me, always marching, always
eating, and oy veh the smell!


May I also suggest
that you adjust the line length of your newsreader as it wraps lines
rather short, which is hardly good for your text but it mangles the
quotes because they are then chopped twice.

oh, ok, i didn't notice i'd chopped at 65 instead of 72,
i've now adjusted it upwards. i'm still testing out my
linux side setup for slrn so as soon as i get that working
the way i like it i will be switching newsreaders... at
this rate it will be a few months yet. i'm in the middle
of too many projects and gardening season is on.

peace and good evening to all,


songbird

And goodnight to you.

David

David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
You have some interesting things to say and you have clearly thought
about them but you do yourself a disservice in your presentation.

your attention is appreciated,
your responses read if i'm still
alive to press the key or click the
mouse, but i'm unlikely to change
my writing style to your satisfaction.


I am not the one who should be satisfied with what you type. I only
point out the problems I see in case you didn't realise they were
there. If you know already and don't care there is nothing I can do
about it.

well i do care, but it is hard to change.
and i do know my pinkies are much
happier with few caps.


considering much is wandering
OT of r.g.e. i'm quite happy to
drop much of it.


Your postings are often made up of very long one-sentence paragraphs
all in lower case.

grammar takes a backseat
and howls to the music of
wurlds colliding.


Your grammar is fine, it's the layout that is the issue.

her knickers about her
sneeze her shoes in a
bundle and (to be true
to this group) a rhubarb
pie on the dash.

...

more seriously, words and ideas
first, am i clear enough that you
understand what i'm aiming at?

Yes you are clear. If you can achieve clarity why not ease as well?

ease is defined too many
ways. for me ease means
lower case most of the time.
the short length i can read
the entire chunk at a glance.


or if i am confusing, you can ask
questions and we can have a
conversation (instead of throwing
links back and forth as seems to
be what is happening to usenet
these days).

paragraphs are for formal
writing, this isn't that kind of
writing.

Sorry no, paragraphs are for readability as is sentence length or
having discernible sentences at all. The way the words appear on
the page determines how easily they are read because (except for very
slow readers) we read in chunks of words.

yes, i read chunks at a time too.


i'm here to have fun
and talk, not write papers for
publication. some of my aim
is to be entertaining and playful
while also being challenging.


Good. Why does that exclude ease of reading?

i read things just fine, i find capital letters
jarring.


You may think that messy old usenet doesn't
require your finger to ever hit the full stop or the shift key but
we will read more and skip less if you employ them.

i like being little. i am keeping my
ego on a leash, don't encourage me
to get all formalic like the big ants in
the amazon do. they scare the shit
outta me, always marching, always
eating, and oy veh the smell!


May I also suggest
that you adjust the line length of your newsreader as it wraps lines
rather short, which is hardly good for your text but it mangles the
quotes because they are then chopped twice.

oh, ok, i didn't notice i'd chopped at 65 instead of 72,
i've now adjusted it upwards. i'm still testing out my
linux side setup for slrn so as soon as i get that working
the way i like it i will be switching newsreaders... at
this rate it will be a few months yet. i'm in the middle
of too many projects and gardening season is on.

peace and good evening to all,


songbird

And goodnight to you.

we have wandered far afield,
but i'm going to return and ask
about the two calorie output vs
one Billy pulled out of ?

and the other question for
Billy is how does organic
gardening sequester carbon
dioxide? improving soil is
good, mixing organic stuff in
and making all the various
critters happy is great, but
that is nutrient cycling not
carbon sequestration... we
need carbon sequestration
at this point. can we get
that via organic gardening
methods at present?

i really need to study
charcoal production methods...
perhaps a solar oven could
do it... gotta go look now.


songbird

In article ,
"songbird" wrote:

David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
You have some interesting things to say and you have clearly thought
about them but you do yourself a disservice in your presentation.

your attention is appreciated,
your responses read if i'm still
alive to press the key or click the
mouse, but i'm unlikely to change
my writing style to your satisfaction.


I am not the one who should be satisfied with what you type. I only
point out the problems I see in case you didn't realise they were
there. If you know already and don't care there is nothing I can do
about it.

well i do care, but it is hard to change.
and i do know my pinkies are much
happier with few caps.


considering much is wandering
OT of r.g.e. i'm quite happy to
drop much of it.


Your postings are often made up of very long one-sentence paragraphs
all in lower case.

grammar takes a backseat
and howls to the music of
wurlds colliding.


Your grammar is fine, it's the layout that is the issue.

her knickers about her
sneeze her shoes in a
bundle and (to be true
to this group) a rhubarb
pie on the dash.

...

more seriously, words and ideas
first, am i clear enough that you
understand what i'm aiming at?

Yes you are clear. If you can achieve clarity why not ease as well?

ease is defined too many
ways. for me ease means
lower case most of the time.
the short length i can read
the entire chunk at a glance.


or if i am confusing, you can ask
questions and we can have a
conversation (instead of throwing
links back and forth as seems to
be what is happening to usenet
these days).

paragraphs are for formal
writing, this isn't that kind of
writing.

Sorry no, paragraphs are for readability as is sentence length or
having discernible sentences at all. The way the words appear on
the page determines how easily they are read because (except for very
slow readers) we read in chunks of words.

yes, i read chunks at a time too.


i'm here to have fun
and talk, not write papers for
publication. some of my aim
is to be entertaining and playful
while also being challenging.


Good. Why does that exclude ease of reading?

i read things just fine, i find capital letters
jarring.


You may think that messy old usenet doesn't
require your finger to ever hit the full stop or the shift key but
we will read more and skip less if you employ them.

i like being little. i am keeping my
ego on a leash, don't encourage me
to get all formalic like the big ants in
the amazon do. they scare the shit
outta me, always marching, always
eating, and oy veh the smell!


May I also suggest
that you adjust the line length of your newsreader as it wraps lines
rather short, which is hardly good for your text but it mangles the
quotes because they are then chopped twice.

oh, ok, i didn't notice i'd chopped at 65 instead of 72,
i've now adjusted it upwards. i'm still testing out my
linux side setup for slrn so as soon as i get that working
the way i like it i will be switching newsreaders... at
this rate it will be a few months yet. i'm in the middle
of too many projects and gardening season is on.

peace and good evening to all,


songbird

And goodnight to you.

we have wandered far afield,
but i'm going to return and ask
about the two calorie output vs
one Billy pulled out of ?


This is called "Modeling Behavior".

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
p.45 - 46
http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dile...ls/dp/01430385
83/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815576&sr=1-1

The reason Greene County is no longer green for half the year is because
the farmer who can buy synthetic fertility no longer needs cover crops
to capture a whole year's worth of sunlight he has plugged himself into
a new source of energy. When you add together the natural gas in the
fertilizer to the fossil fuels it takes to make the pesticides, drive
the tractors, and harvest, dry, and transport the corn, you find that
every bushel of industrial corn requires the equivalent of between a
quarter and a third of a gallon of oil to grow it‹or around fifty
gallons of oil per acre of corn. (Some estimates are much higher.) Put
another way, it takes more than a calorie of fossil fuel energy to
produce a calorie of food; before the advent of chemical fertilizer the
Naylor farm produced more than two calories of food energy for every
calorie of energy invested.

From the standpoint of industrial efficiency, it's too bad we can't
simply drink the petroleum directly.

and the other question for
Billy is how does organic
gardening sequester carbon
dioxide? improving soil is
good, mixing organic stuff in
and making all the various
critters happy is great, but
that is nutrient cycling not
carbon sequestration... we
need carbon sequestration
at this point. can we get
that via organic gardening
methods at present?

Only in terms of bio-mass, unless you include "terra preta", and its
charcoal.

Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
Ch.1, second paragraph.
http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microb.../dp/0881927775
/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815176&sr= 1-1

In addition to all the living organisms you can see in garden soils (for
example, there are up to 50 earthworms in a square foot [0.09 square
meters] of good soil), there is a whole world of soil organisms that you
cannot see unless you use sophisticated and expensive optics. Only then
do the tiny, microscopic organisms‹bacteria, fungi, protozoa,
nematodes‹appear, and in numbers that are nothing less than staggering.
A mere teaspoon of good garden soil, as measured by microbial
geneticists, contains a billion invisible bacteria, several yards of
equally invisible fungal hyphae, several thousand protozoa, and a few
dozen nematodes.
----

Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture
(Paperback)
by Toby Hemenway
p.78
http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...ulture/dp/1603
580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271266976&sr=1-1

Like most living things, leaves are made primarily of carbon-containing
compounds: sugars, proteins, starches, and many other organic molecules.
When soil creatures eat these compounds, some of the carbon becomes part
of the consumer, as cell membrane, wing case, eyeball, or the like. And
some of the carbon is released as a gas: carbon dioxide, or CO, (our
breath contains carbon dioxide for the same reason). Soil organisms
consume the other elements that make up the leaf, too, such as nitrogen,
calcium, phosphorus, and all the rest, but most of those are
reincorporated into solid matter‹organism or bug manure‹and remain
earthbound. A substantial portion of the carbon, however, puffs into the
atmosphere as carbon dioxide. This means that, in decomposing matter,
the ratio of carbon to the other elements is decreasing; carbon drifts
into the air, but most nitrogen, for example, stays behind. The
carbon-to-nitrogen ratio decreases. (Compost enthusiasts will recognize
this C:N ratio as a critical element of a good compost pile.) In
decomposition, carbon levels drop quickly, while the amounts of the
other elements in our decomposing leaf stay roughly the same.



1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus : Charles C. Mann
http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelatio...mbus/dp/140003
2059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269536235&sr=1-1

According to a recent study led by Dirse Kern, of the Museu Goeldi in
Belem, terra preta is "not associated with a particular parent soil type
or environmental condition," suggesting that it was not produced by
natural processes. Another clue to its human origin is the broken
ceramics with which it is usually mixed. "They practiced agriculture
here for centuries," Glaser told me. "But instead of destroying the
soil, they improved it, and that is something we don't know how to do
today" in tropical soils.
As a rule, terra preta has more "plant-available" phosphorus, calcium,
sulfur, and nitrogen than is common in the rain forest; it also has much
more organic matter, better retains moisture and nutrients, and is not
rapidly exhausted by agricultural use when managed well. The key to
terra preta's long-term fertility, Glaser says, is charcoal: terra preta
contains up to sixty-four times more of it than surrounding red earth.
Organic matter "sticks" to charcoal, rather than being washed away or
attaching to other, nonavailable compounds. "Over time, it

p.346

partly oxidizes, which keeps providing sites for nutrients to bind to."
But simply mixing charcoal into the ground is not enough to create terra
preta. Because charcoal contains few nutrients, Glaser argued,
"high-nutrient inputs‹excrement and waste such as turtle, fish, and
animal bones‹are necessary." Special soil microorganisms are also likely
to play a role in its persistent fertility, in the view of Janice Thies,
a soil ecologist who is part of a Cornell University team studying terra
preta. "There are indications that microbial biomass is higher in terra
preta than in other forest soils," she told me, which raises the
possibility that scientists might be able to create a "package" of
charcoal, nutrients, and microfauna that could be used to transform bad
tropical soil into terra preta.

Despite the charcoal, terra preta is not a by-product of slash-and-burn
agriculture. To begin with, slash-and-burn simply does not produce
enough charcoal to make terra preta‹the carbon mostly goes into the air
in the form of carbon dioxide. Instead, Indians apparently made terra
preta by a process that Christoph Steiner, a University of Bayreuth soil
scientist, has dubbed "slash-and-char." Instead of completely burning
organic matter to ash, ancient farmers burned it incompletely to make
charcoal, then stirred the charcoal into the soil. In addition to its
benefits to the soil, slash-and-char releases much less carbon into the
air than slash-and-burn, which has large potential implications for
climate change. Trees store vast amounts of carbon in their trunks,
branches, and leaves. When they die or people cut them down, the carbon
is usually released into the atmosphere, driving global warming.
Experiments by Makoto Ogawa of the Kansai Environmental Engineering
Center, near Kyoto, Japan, demonstrated that charcoal retains its carbon
in the soil for up to fifty thousand years.

i really need to study
charcoal production methods...
perhaps a solar oven could
do it... gotta go look now.


songbird
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg
http://radwisdom.com/essays/this-is-your-brain/

songbird wrote:
we have wandered far afield,
but i'm going to return and ask
about the two calorie output vs
one Billy pulled out of ?


I would be interested to see that too.

and the other question for
Billy is how does organic
gardening sequester carbon
dioxide?

I am guessing that in the long term organic horticulture has only a mild
effect in storage. If you have 10% organic material in your soil you are
sequestering more carbon than if you have 1% but it isn't going to be a big
carbon sink. Assuming that you can still feed the numbers required. OTOH
if you don't use all the chemferts that require energy to manufacture then
you are saving some at that end.

improving soil is
good, mixing organic stuff in
and making all the various
critters happy is great, but
that is nutrient cycling not
carbon sequestration... we
need carbon sequestration
at this point. can we get
that via organic gardening
methods at present?


This can only be answered properly by careful numeric modelling but I don't
have a reference for it. My guess is that it won't be so valuable. However
if combined with other methods such as forest re-planting and organic
pasture management we might make some progress. Regarding the latter, I
have seen studies that say that pastures (as opposed to crops) can store
significant carbon. To do this you need to grass-feed your animals instead
of ripping out the pastures to grow corn to feed them in lots.

i really need to study
charcoal production methods...
perhaps a solar oven could
do it... gotta go look now.



I think that this would be possible but the big question is what would be
the energy cost and financial cost to do it.

Regardless of sequestration there is no mid-term solution unless we stop
burning fossil fuel at such a rate. We must decide to do this as a species,
the limits of availability will make the decision for us in respect of oil
quite soon but there is enough coal left to send earth well into the
greenhouse if we keep burning it at an increasing rate. And only one
long-term solution: stop population growth.

David

wrote:
songbird wrote:

but i'm unlikely to change my writing style to your satisfaction.

Will, I for one, am not just "unlikely" but am totally unwilling to
change my reading style to indulge your pretentious self-importance
and read your drivel. What happened to "shooting the shit" is a
preponderance of shit heads. What do you want on your burger?

are you talking to Billy or me?

usually when people talk to me
they include words like sanctimonious,
silly or immature. so you have me
as confused as a church mouse in
a cheese shop.

the usenet has changed a great deal
over the years i have been reading
and writing. lately i think things are
improving...


songbird

In article ,
"songbird" wrote:

Billy wrote:
...
Quite a little rant. As far as organic foods are concerned,
that is
what
humanity has been eating since the Garden of Eden to 1945. If
that is
insufficient, then it is a wonder that we are still here. Our
liver is
indeed here to protect us from our mistakes, has our entire
history
been
a mistake?

Organic religion? Shirley, you jest. We are only talking about
traditional food, grown in traditional ways. Does that aspire
to the
level of a cult?

some people talk about it with that gleem in
their eyes which removes all doubt that this
is _The True and Only Way_ to grow things.

alas, science will continue to show that
there will be even better ways of doing
things, given time, evolution is not optimized.



Contemporary, commercial agriculture kills top soil, kills soil
ecology,

have you read anything about no-till practices?

i'm not a contemporary farm practices apologist,
i just don't see how we get out of the current fix
without food riots and mass starvation and many
other turmoils.


pollutes ground water, and creates ocean dead zones around the
mouthes
of rivers.

i think organic farms can also pollute ground water
and certainly do contribute to nutrients in the rivers
thus the dead zones. i think there is a major problem
there but i think it is also contributed to heavily by
many other practices which are not agricultural
(lawns being one of them, massive parking lots/paving,
ditching, drainage not filtered through wetlands,
waste processing plants, etc). i don't think it correct to
put that sort of thing wholly on the plates of the
non-organic farmers.


Contemporary, commercial agriculture requires more than a
calorie of fossil fuel for each calorie of food. Organic
(traditional)
agriculture produces 2+ calories for each calorie of input.

where are you getting this calorie amount from?
from what i know, organic farming is more
labor intensive, so will require more people
to grow the things consumed. which is good
for employment, but does not help reduce
the pressure on the entire planet's ecosystem.

i do agree that the petrochemical system
currently in place is going to peter out
eventually, it has to, there isn't an infinite
supply of oil. there isn't an infinite supply
of anything on this planet, we really need
to be investing in figuring out how to survive
in smaller systems and what is needed
to thrive there.


Contemporary, commercial agriculture fills your body with
chemicals
that
your liver never saw before, much less has developed any way of
dealing
with.

somewhat true, and these are greatly troubling
to me also. Dioxins being a local trouble (read
about the dioxin contamination of the
Tittabawassee River and the Saginaw River
sometime).

i'm also greatly troubled by the general
neglect of understanding of what happens
to things after we are done with them.
including things like BC meds, all those
plastics (which you speak about below
and i agree with that they are trouble) which
act as long term sources of pollutants,
landfills, etc.


With corporations now funding large segments of our underfunded
higher
education, don't be surprised if scientists can't get funding
for
nutritional studies that are very expensive to run. Even now,
industry
is fighting doing toxicological studies of chemicals that that
were
grand fathered into our food delivery system.

i know, that is horrible and for
certain should require safety studies,
even if done for one item per company
per season it's not that terrible a
thing to ask. and actually if you have
many companies using the compound
in question they could all contribute
to the study based upon how much
they use. seems fair and the cost
gets passed on to consumers anyways
in one form or another eventually...
there's no real way to avoid the
price of ignorance even if most
people do not really want the
slightly higher prices that knowledge
would cost it's a basic science
question that eventually will have to
be addressed, it doesn't matter
what the currency is used to
pay for it, the ultimate currency is
human time and wasted or damaged
lives/ecosystems/other organisms, etc.

i read about current practices
in meat processing and testing and
decide to not eat much ground meat
as a result. there's no way i want
meat that has been treated with
ammonia to kill the microbes put
back into the mix (i thought that
was what pigs were for ). and
actually i try to eat less meat as i
consider it fairly "expensive" when
it comes to the environment. as
an omnivore it's a part of the total
feedbag and i like a good burger
or steak once in a while, but i know
some people who eat that way
every day... um, not for me...


http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=chemical-controls
April 2010, Scientific American
p. 30
Chemical Controls
Congress needs to give federal agencies greater authority to
test and
regulate chemicals

People seem to thrive on traditional food. It is only when they
take
up
western food that they get sick.

again, not entirely true, before modern
methods came along people died from
malnutrition and food borne diseases or
just didn't make it to old age where such
things as heart disease and diabetes tend
to show up more and more.

when i want to amuse myself i think
that i really wasn't meant to live past
40 and should have been food for a
saber tooth tiger.


One of the reasons that wheat was
separated from its germ is because with only the starch and
none of
its
nutrition, white flour attracts fewer pests. Stay away from
processed
foods (empty calories of sugar, white flour, and white rice),
and
you'll
be healthier. The Inuit didn't have diabetes, until they
started
eating
from trading posts. Colonial doctors reported little i the way
of
diabetes, cancer, or high blood pressure,

heh, a lot of people just died earlier than they
do now, and much that people used to die of
isn't accurately known or reported. there are
still troubles in knowing even now. this is a
continuing issue of privacy vs. community
health and what science needs to know to
advance understanding. not easy things to
resolve.


until the introduction of
the "Western" diet. Sugar consumption (IIRC) has gone from 15
lbs/year in 1840 to approximately 170 lbs/year at present in
"western" cultures.
But, hey, it's your organism, who am I to tell you not to abuse
it?

i'm offline at the moment so i cannot follow links... however,
some of what you write above is simply not true. modern
food science and as a result changes in agricultural
practices has reduced toxicity of certain things and i'm
glad for that (being that peanut butter is something i like
to eat on a regular basis i'm glad to know it's produced
to reduce the toxins that can otherwise accumulate). also
that is true for many grain crops that used to have much
higher fungal troubles and the resulting toxins... not that
this is all right, but i think it has helped in some ways.

i agree that the overprocessing and such is not good,
and i eat myself to avoid some of the things you mention
but not completely as certain tastes, textures and
end products (in baking and candy making) just aren't
right when done with whole grain flours or unrefined
sugars.

moderation being the key there (omnivore means
eat a variety of things, physiology says eat more
plant than animal things, climate and physical exercise
means certain amounts of calories are needed and
sometimes you have to have dense sources of nutrients
just to survive, but most people these days do not
need as much as they are getting which is obvious).


Especially, when the University of California
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16717
and
Stanford University
http://academicearth.org/lectures/battle-of-the-diets
can say it much more eloquently and with more authority than I
can.

Don't get me wrong, even traditional organic agriculture isn't
perfect.
Far from it,
http://www.environnement.ens.fr/pers.../mistake_jared
_diamond.pdf

And as you work on your grapevine, or worrying about
uncontrolled
immigration, remember that by 2050, there will be 9 billion
people on
this planet with us, and 12 billion by 2067. And we have
already
exceeded the Earth's carrying capacity for us.

oh believe me i'm already knowing of
that. it's only the petrochemicals which
are feeding a lot of people now, when
they start becoming scarce the food riots
are going to be "interesting". my personal
choice to not have children and to drive
as little as possible a very fuel efficient
car is what i could do to make a difference.
i try to make other differences in not
using a lot of fertilizers, in trying to
soak up or filter runoff before it hits the
ditches. i'm a big fan of river restorations
and letting the rivers flood again where
they used to go, restoring wetlands,
stopping the spraying of nerve poisons
for insect controls, etc.

i like organic farming, i like working
with the world around me instead of
having to fight it, but at the moment i'm
also having to live in a world with values
almost 180 degrees from my own so
somethings i must bend around as i
can.


We can't even figure out what to do with a half-century's total
production of over a 1 billion tons of plastic that is floating
around
in the oceans. It includes hundreds of different plastics, with
untold
permutations involving added plasticizers, opacifiers, colors,
fillers,
strengtheners, and light stabilizers. The longevity of each can
vary
enormously. Thus far, none has disappeared.

some of it has been incorporated in reefs.
(one of my interests has been coral reef
oceanography/biology/nutrient cycling).


What did this mean for the ocean, the ecosystem, the future?
Would its
chemical constituents or additives for instance, colorants
such as
metallic copper concentrate as they ascended the food chain,
and
alter
evolution?

raw copper is really tough on marine
critters. most of it gets bound in one
way or another before it gets to the
oceans.


The use of aggressively toxic polychlorinated biphenyls
plastics
more pliable had been banned since 1970; among other hazards,
PCBs
were known to promote hor-
monal havoc such as hermaphroditic fish and polar bears. Like
time-release capsules, pre-1970 plastic flotsam will gradually
leak
PCBs
into the ocean for centuries. But, as Takada also discovered,
free-floating toxins from all kinds of sources grease,
coolant
fluids, old fluorescent tubes, and infamous discharges
by General Electric and Monsanto plants directly into streams
and
rivers
One study directly correlated ingested plastics with PCBs in
the fat
tissue of puffins. The astonishing part was the amount. Takada
aad his
colleagues found that plastic pellets that the birds ate
concentrate
poisons to levels as high as 1 million times their normal
occurrence
in
seawater.

yep, it's going to take it's toll one
way or another. i'm glad we
recycle plastics here. until we
did i was not buying certain
products because i objected
to the packaging.

mercury loading is troublesome
too from coal burning (among other
things). ok, this we must skip for
now. my toxic metal knowledge is
limited to lead, murkery, copper
and some of the radioactives.


The World Without Us (Paperback)
by Alan Weisman
POLYMERS ARE FOREVER / 151
http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-...2427905/ref=sr
_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274206221&sr=1-1

And we want to build more nuclear reactors ;O)

designed right and run right i'll take
them over coal/oil any time, but my
preference is more towards solar and
wind and conservation measures.
the big trouble with the wastes is a
farce, they could be disposed in a
way which the earth would normally
cycle them (reprocess, what's left
could be encased in heavy glass,
steel, lead, etc. then dropped into a
continental subduction zone which
would take it back into the mantle).

in the end we gotta get a move on
learning how to live in space and
that has a certain time frame that it
has to happen by or we're just another
fossil in the record...

a few good blasts from a bunch
of volcanoes and we're seriously
in trouble worldwide within two
years... in my other moments
of wondering what kind of
people i live among it amazes
me how many really just don't
care about the long term future
of the planet and the means
by which we can get moving towards
other planets... optimally i would
like to have that happen when we
know what it takes to live in a
relatively closed system without
damaging ourselves in the process...
but if push comes to shove i know
what bit of the cosmic ark i'd
want to be on.

it is going to take a large
and organised system of
production to get that to happen
which means corporations or
government agencies and all
the foibles of human nature
that come along with such
groupings. at least science
has ways of understanding and
helping all around. i think
organic means of production will
be a part of that too, but there
will also be industrial processes
too. we're just too far past the
carrying capacity (as you say and
i agree with) to go back short of
cataclysm or a real serious long
range effort to gradually reduce
populations... i don't see that
happening. people want to have
babies, they want children to
take care of them when they
grow older, they want workers
to pay taxes so they can fund their
pet projects (safety studies,
nutritional studies, health studies,
space science and exploration ) hee

oh, i feel bad that i didn't
speak about ocean acidification.
as that is a basic change that
will have long range effects and
we're basically ignoring it by
pumping all the carbon dioxide
into the air... organic gardening
is not going to fix that because
organic gardening aims to recycle
nutrients not sequester carbon
dioxide. somehow that has to
be addressed and fairly immediately
and unfortunately it's not. people
are still driving SUVs even after
the oil platform spill and all the
havoc that is going to cause... *sigh*

if only i were king... i think that is
why your .sig is always amusing to me.

consider this:

humans are an ecological system's
response to limited and finite resources...
we are the great innoculators, the
means of dispersal and of course
destruction if we screw up. oops.

ok, good night, it's been fun...


songbird

All brain farts, and not one citation. Good luck with that.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg
http://radwisdom.com/essays/this-is-your-brain/

Billy wrote:
....
All brain farts, and not one citation. Good luck with that.

you quote the whole thing for a one
line reply?

oh, ok, Billy, i see your comprehension
is down, read again where i said i composted
my reply off-line.

i have a very slow connection, i do
not watch tv or load audio via internet
unless it's the rare thing i want to wait
hours to accomplish, usually i cannot
tie up the phone line for that length of
time.

i'm mostly here to converse and
read about gardening, i'll try to have
fun in the process. most of what
you write in reply i am aware of and
actually agree with in some parts, if
you'd read it you'd see. yet there
are large gaps even in that time will
show. poking at them is just the
way i am.

now can you tell me what happened
to the art of general shooting the shit?
it sure isn't about quoting links back
and forth.

good day,


songbird

In article ,
"songbird" wrote:

Billy wrote:
...
All brain farts, and not one citation. Good luck with that.

you quote the whole thing for a one
line reply?

oh, ok, Billy, i see your comprehension
is down, read again where i said i composted
my reply off-line.

i have a very slow connection, i do
not watch tv or load audio via internet
unless it's the rare thing i want to wait
hours to accomplish, usually i cannot
tie up the phone line for that length of
time.

i'm mostly here to converse and
read about gardening, i'll try to have
fun in the process. most of what
you write in reply i am aware of and
actually agree with in some parts, if
you'd read it you'd see. yet there
are large gaps even in that time will
show. poking at them is just the
way i am.

now can you tell me what happened
to the art of general shooting the shit?
it sure isn't about quoting links back
and forth.

good day,


songbird

Shooting the shit is fine, but without authority, it is just babbling,
and logic is only as good as its premise.
You quoted links?
Citation please.
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg
http://radwisdom.com/essays/this-is-your-brain/

Billy wrote:
....
Shooting the shit is fine, but without authority, it is just babbling,

today's authority is sometimes
wrong. i worked for 7 people
who were authorities and they
were a lost cause. and so i
don't trust authorities blindly
and find most popular works
too light on rigor...

because of that i have been
trying to get a hold of more
studious works lately. i was
reading a college level plant
physiology textbook a few
weeks ago and it ignored
so many topics and instead focused
on the pet topics of the various
contributors.

don't get me wrong, it was a
good book for me to read but
it was very incomplete and i was
afraid that many students who had
this as their only plant physiology
book would be missing so much.

now i am looking for other
good reads, so recommend away
and i will line some of them up
and see what they have to offer.


and logic is only as good as its premise.

if it's valid.


You quoted links?

only those you included, but
many i did not follow because
i was offline (as i am now).


Citation please.

tossing citations back and
forth with no personal interpretation
on your part isn't a conversation.

tell me when you cite a
link what it means to you
and how it is lived by you.
otherwise you are a shadow
boxer.

do you garden? how do
you garden? what do you
garden?

or i am here to babble then.


songbird

In article ,
"songbird" wrote:

Billy wrote:
...
Shooting the shit is fine, but without authority, it is just babbling,

today's authority is sometimes
wrong. i worked for 7 people
who were authorities and they
were a lost cause. and so i
don't trust authorities blindly
and find most popular works
too light on rigor...

Great, so to counter balance lack of rigor, you offer none? What do you
use to justify your beliefs on up and down, good and bad, right or wrong?

because of that i have been
trying to get a hold of more
studious works lately. i was
reading a college level plant
physiology textbook a few
weeks ago and it ignored
so many topics and instead focused
on the pet topics of the various
contributors.

You were reading an anthology by various authors writing about subjects
that they supposedly would know the most?


don't get me wrong, it was a
good book for me to read but
it was very incomplete and i was
afraid that many students who had
this as their only plant physiology
book would be missing so much.

You expected all of plant physiology in one book? Kinda makes you wonder
what the other 40 units were all about.

now i am looking for other
good reads, so recommend away
and i will line some of them up
and see what they have to offer.


and logic is only as good as its premise.

if it's valid.


You quoted links?
Citation please.

only those you included, but
many i did not follow because
i was offline (as i am now).

You argue, but give no supporting authority: divine revelation, inspired
intuition, bull shit? Who knows? You offer no argument for your
denigration of organic food.




tossing citations back and
forth with no personal interpretation
on your part isn't a conversation.

Since we haven't done the original work, it's my authorities against
your authorities.

tell me when you cite a
link what it means to you
and how it is lived by you.
otherwise you are a shadow
boxer.

lame
do you garden? how do
you garden? what do you
garden?
I thought we were talking about the irrelevance of organic food. Why are
you wandering off, or are you jut trying to change the subject?

or i am here to babble then.

Looks like it.


songbird
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/2...al_crime_scene

In article ,
"songbird" wrote:

now i am looking for other
good reads, so recommend away
and i will line some of them up
and see what they have to offer.

"Vegetable Gardener' Bible" by Edward C. Smith.
http://www.amazon.com/Vegetable-Gard...Gardening/dp/1
580172121/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815454&sr=1-1

"How to Grow More Vegetables" by John Jeavons
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/...=search-alias%
3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=How+to+Grow+More+Vegetables&x=0&y=0

Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microb.../dp/0881927775
/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815176&sr= 1-1

Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture
(Paperback)
by Toby Hemenway
http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...ulture/dp/1603
580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271266976&sr=1-1

Creative Propagation [Illustrated] (Paperback)
by Peter Thompson (Author), Owen Josie (Illustrator)
http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Propa...dp/0881926817/
ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273249143&sr=1-1

Let it Rot!: The Gardener's Guide to Composting (Third Edition)
(Storey's Down-to-Earth Guides) (Paperback) by Stu Campbell
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/158..._p14_i1?pf_rd_
m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1HT31JNNBYN5BXFZS2EA&pf_rd_t=101
&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dile...ls/dp/01430385
83/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815576&sr=1-1

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan
http://www.amazon.com/Defense-Food-E...114964/ref=sr_
1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238974366&sr=1-1

Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply
by Vandana Shiva
http://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Harvest...y/dp/089608607
0/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238974474&sr=1-10

What to Eat
by Marion Nestle
http://www.amazon.com/What-Eat-Mario...ref=sr_1_1?ie=
UTF8&s=books&qid=1238974909&sr=1-1

Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the
Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating (Paperback)
by Jeffrey M. Smith
http://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Deceptio...y-Engineered/d
p/0972966587/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247180992&sr=1-1
€ ISBN-10: 0972966587
€ ISBN-13: 978-0972966580

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition, and Health,
Revised and Expanded Edition (California Studies in Food and Culture)
by Marion Nestle
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Politics-...lifornia/dp/05
20254031/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244222934&sr=1-2
€ ISBN-10: 0520254031
€ ISBN-13: 978-0520254039

American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT
by James E. McWilliams
http://www.amazon.com/American-Pests...l/dp/023113942
X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238975011&sr=1-1

General Viticulture
by A. J. Winkler, James A. Cook, W. M. Kliewer, Lloyd A. Lider
http://www.amazon.com/General-Viticu...025911/ref=sr_
1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238975081&sr=1-1

The Fatal Harvest Reader by Andrew Kimbrell
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b_...stripbooks&fie
ld-keywords=fatal+harvest+reader&sprefix=Fatal+Ha

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable
Gardeners,
by Suzanne Ashworth and Kent Whealy
http://www.amazon.com/Seed-Growing-T...deners/dp/1882
424581/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238951517&sr=1-1


1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus : Charles C. Mann
http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelatio...mbus/dp/140003
2059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269536235&sr=1-1

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science
of Diet and Health
~ Gary Taubes
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-...ce/dp/14000334
62/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267036694&sr=1-1

The World Without Us (Paperback)
by Alan Weisman
http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-...2427905/ref=sr
_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274206221&sr=1-1


Related

The Revolution will not be Microwaved
by Sandor Ellix Katz
http://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Wil...round/dp/19333
92118/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218128128&sr= 1-1
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/2...al_crime_scene