Okay, not hermitting yet. So here are some newslinks.
- Just vaporware so far, but Forbes thinks cops might soon add ‘Net-connected guns to their growing arsenal of monitoring gear.
- Nastiest political tactic of the year: siccing SWAT teams on your opponents and critics.
- A southerner apologizes for bigotry. But with the southerner being Fred Reed, things don’t quite come out the way northern liberals might wish.
- Nooz you can use (if you’re really into alternative housing): grain-bin homes. (I love the stuccoed one, but I’d like to know how you keep these things from getting hotter than the hinges of heck, long about August.) Tip o’ hat, MJR.
- More nooz to use: how successful people handle toxic people.
- Mike V. on blood dancers and 4th-gen. warfare.
- You forgot to add how useful those bags are for picking up dog poop. I live in a blue state and the closer you go to civilization, the more likely it is that you’ll have to bring your own cloth shopping bags. Misguided political correctness.
You would have to insulate the inside of the grain bin houses. Also there is a white insulating paint that people paint on the top of mobile homes–otherwise those are also hotter than__.
Before the plastic bag ban, I always had a supply of those amazingly strong, thin, lightweight, biodegradable Hippo bags – the pretty green ones with the handles. After a long and productive life they became garbage bags. Since medium garbage bags are insanely expensive, my little Hippo bags have been replaced by Tall Kitchen Bags from Costco which are rarely filled even half-way. I also purchased additional disposable plastic gloves to clean up the garbage dropped from my neighbor’s wet paper bags. We live near a paper company and everyone here should know that paper manufacturing is VERY energy intensive. Idiocracy lives!
I bought one of those cloth bags once… on sale and it was pretty. It will likely last me the rest of my life because I almost never remember to take it into the store. And the few times I do remember, it sits in the house for a month or so before I remember to take it back to the car…
Needs to be a different answer for old folks with poor memories. LOL
Now, I’d like to know why so many grocery clerks put a single small item into a big plastic bag sometimes… I can’t remember that ever happening when all we had was paper.
I must be getting old, but I remember back in the day that plastic bags were originally introduced by social pressure and guilt-tripping as a way to save trees.
I make paper, and I can tell you that it’s probably even more energy intensive than you think.
The basic commercial process used for those brown paper grocery bags cooks (energy for heat) wood chips (energy for chipping the wood) that have been further shredded (more energy) in an alkali solution (lots and lots of electricity to produce the sodium hydroxide). That ends up in a pulp slab (shaping costs energy) that only then goes (transportation; gas/diesel!) to the bag maker. The manufacturer shreds the mat (those things don’t run on unicorn farts) into a vat, lifts out the wet pulp, runs it through rollers, dries it, and cuts it to size. Guess what that machinery runs on. From there, the sheets go to a folding machine where it’s glued (wanna hear about the power-sucking glue-making process?) into shape, folded again, and bundled.
(My own system varies: I use potassium hydroxide (from wood ashes from my stove in winter), and heat it on said stove in the winter. Summertime, I use a propane stove. Wood pulp only makes up about 30% of my paper, because I use rag and non-wood vegetable pulp like grass clippings. All the mechanical work is manual, so the power is muscle energy. But I also don’t churn out tons of paper for commercial use. Wood pulp paper is actually a relatively recent development, historically speaking.)
I bought a “cloth” (actually a non-woven synthetic) bag once. Rarely remembered to take it to the store, so I finally used it to store the dress shoes I wear once a year or so. The “horrible” plastic bags get used for cushion stuffing, package padding, organizing some storage, and as trash bags. I’ve even melted down some bags to make and repair small parts.
Indeed, Bear…
I hate to break it to all the greenies, but every speck of life requires energy… to do anything at all. I respectfully suggest they give up the idea they can dictate what and where for anyone but themselves.
But hey! I’d love to see some of your paper projects. Don’t do much pen and paper writing now myself, but I’ve always loved interesting craft papers.
Mama, THIS is the only one handy.
An excellent article about dealing with toxic people!! Got a couple in my life these days and trying to help a friend deal with a toxic DH in her life. It’s full of tips that we all know but seem to forget when the need to remember them arises. Thanks Claire!
Wonderful article on bigotry; the SWAT team stuff was pretty informative, too.
[I hate to break it to all the greenies, but every speck of life requires energy…]
That is literally so. It’s called the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. In any closed system, entropy always increases. Only by injecting energy can the process be reversed.
Wonder how long it will take badguys to figure out how to detect the officer’s Bluetooth signals. They’ll be encrypted, of course, but you don’t have to know what the signal says to tell where the cop sending it is located.
the closer you go to civilization
I know what you’re saying, but I have difficulty recognizing places where plastic bags are banned (and other such silliness flourishes) as “civilized.”
Wow, thanks Claire. I didn’t think this would be too interesting a selection, but it certainly was.
1) Net connected guns? How stupid is that? If it’s in ‘the cloud’ it’s way too easily hacked. Also, since it will force accountability on the cops, I predict that virtually all will start to carry some non-issue sidearm as well if they don’t already. Nobody wants every move they make questioned.
2) Sipsey St. Post was good – but they most often are. And the comments about what the newscasters are saying are just really enlightening about how stupid the anti-gun camp is. Now wonder they’re scared of guns – they’d put their own eyes out with one.
Interesting discussion about the new nutty “smart guns” at The Truth About Guns blog. http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/10/foghorn/yardarm-real-time-firearms-tracking-alert-system-coming-police-station-near/
Personally, I want nothing but the old dumb guns that require me to use my brain for the smart part. Especially after fooling around for the last week with setting up a new computer system (refurbished, not “new’) – I have little faith in any electronic gadget when my safety is at stake.
I’m very much a fan of old dumb cars as well.