Saturday, August 2, 2014

Recap of last weeks posts 7/27 to 8/2/14

Looks like I missed a week.  No recap for 7/20 to 7/26.  This is to re-establish the habit.

Seems like I was all over the map this week---started out with the usual societal dreck, but got back on track with my special project as the week wore on.  This last day of the week, I spent researching on the net and obtained two books for identifying plants.

This one made the "Best of" list and seems appropriate for the lack of content.

Posting has been light ( case study # ??? )

From that post, I gather that people may suspect that a lack of posting means I am up to something.  


Bwah, hah hah hah!!!


Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

The University of Texas at Austin

A source for identifying plants, which may come in handy on my next visit out west.

Here are some plants said to be in the area in which I bought some land:

  1. Dakota mock vervain
  2. Hairy grama
  3. Sideoats grama
  4. Firewheel
  5. Indian Paintbrush
  6. Tahoka Daisy
  7. Mexican Buckeye
  8. Big Bend Woodyaster
  9. Yellow yucca
I don't expect to find all of these, or even most of them.  However, at least two of these may be present. ( items 2,3)

This belongs in my off-the-grid series.

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Talk to the hand, or to the elbow?

Things get stranger and stranger.

This chick seems like she's on drugs or something.




Talk to my elbow? Where did they get that? Maybe from this?





Plant life in West Texas

What got me started on this topic is this tree that I cannot identify.  It looks like a palm tree, but I can't find anything on it.  It is rather short, less than 10 ft tall.  It's growth is at the top and it doesn't have branches.  It might be a cycad, but cycads aren't supposed to be in West Texas.

So, I'm considering buying a couple books and reading up on Texas plant life.  Maybe I'll learn something that will help me.

Another source I want to mention is this website about the Chihuahuan Desert.


Paramedic Brings New Capabilities, and Passion, to EMS in Hudspeth County

Hudspeth County Herald

As of Wednesday, March 20, one of NHC-EMS’ ambulances is equipped and authorized to operate as a “mobile intensive care unit,” or MICU, when Edgin, as a licensed paramedic, is on board. On the MICU ambulance, the care provided is “basically the same type a patient would receive in the emergency room,” Edgin said The new capability significantly improves the EMS’ ability to treat critical patients and to bring them alive to hospital care...The MICU ambulance, which will operate out of Sierra Blanca and in Dell City one day a week, includes a new range of medical devices and medications.

I think I saw one of these units parked on the main drag in Sierra Blanca on my last trip there.

Update:

There's a rare earth mine in the area and the story is also covered in this publication. I've written about rare earths before on this here blog.

Front page here.





Friday, August 1, 2014

Evan Sayet: "The Modern Liberal is the Stupidest Human Being Who Has Ever Lived"

Ace

comment:

This seems to be one of those stick-out-your-tongue-at-the-other-guys type of posts.  You don't like 'em, so they are "stupid".  I don't like 'em either, but they sure do seem to win elections and they sure do seem to make money.  Somehow, the GOP doesn't cope with this very well at all.


When it rains...



Payrolls Watch: July Challenger Job Layoffs Surge Most In Over 2 Years


Thursday, July 31, 2014

Tofu McNuggets

http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-japan-launches-tofu-mcnuggets-2014-7

Japan's meat supply is messed up, but they can try these. 

Checking in: 7/31/14

Same story as before--- using the Google maps to id landmarks for navigation on property.

The maps are so engrossing.  It really does chew up the time.

Why bother?  Well, I've been out there twice now.  Things are not as neat and organized as in the city.  If a map says just go so many feet in one direction, that is easy in the city.  In the boonies,  you've got obstacles to go around and so forth.  There's no nice and neat way to tell distances and direction.  You need landmarks for guidance.  That's what I'm looking for in the maps.  The maps are limited because it looks downward from the sky.  You are seeing trees, bushes, ditches and so forth from way above.  The detail is less than you'd like and it is not in the form that convenient.  So, the landmarks have to be distinctive enough to recognize when I get there the next time.  Otherwise, I'm wasting my time.  I've got to be able to translate the satellite image into something useful that I can use on the ground.

How much longer?  Looks like I'm wrapping up in a few days.  Then I can move on to even more boring stuff.  Bwah hah hah.


Wednesday, July 30, 2014

GDP up 4 per cent

That puts the kibosh on recession talk for the time being.  You know, if these people are going all out to keep the people bamboozled, this number should be taken with more than a grain of salt.


Water collection

Light rain: http://youtu.be/GMZI6V7h9KM

Update:

Demonstration of water collection potential from rainfall.  Water comes out in buckets from a building roof drainage system even in a light rain.


These could become trees

Mesquite tree seeds

Link didn't work before, hopefully it is now corrected.

I'm going to attempt growing some mesquite trees on my patio.  Then I will transplant them to the property on a future visit.

There could be a bunch of these if all goes well.


Checking in: 7/30/14

Still checking out the property on Google maps.  This is an education in itself.  Perhaps I will become an expert in navigating my own property without even having seen it all first hand.  The wonders of modern technology.  ( tongue in cheek )

One might get discouraged from the looks of it all.  Maybe modern technology can save my asterisk.

Update:

Swamp coolers might save your butt.  They don't appear to use much electricity and can actually help to collect clean water!  First, evaporate less than potable water in the swamp cooler and then condense it back into distilled water.


Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Checking in: 7/29/14

Getting rather boring, huh?  Not enough posts.  Not enough content.

Got up a little "late", checked the news, and boom!  It's already getting past my schedule time to get ready for my salt mine trip.

Still checking out my property with the google maps satellite view.  What I'm looking for is landmarks so that I can navigate the property when I'm out there.  I'm also looking for potential water sources.

Here's something that may annoy Barnhardt and her fans ( if any of those come here )

Considering the context, Jesus is saying that it's okay to pay "tribute to Caesar".  If tribute to Caesar is okay, taxes must be okay too.
Barnhardt claims it's not okay to pay taxes.  But ancient Rome must have been far worse than we are, and here is Jesus saying it's okay to render unto Caesar.


Monday, July 28, 2014

Flashback: “On Nobility,” November 2008

Protein Wisdom



summary:



Is Obama malicious, or just incompetent?  Should the right pull its punches with respect to this man?



I say no.  If you want to win, you need to go all out.  The left does it all the time and they win a lot of the time.








Checking in: July 28, 2014

Freaking Monday already.  Time to march off to the salt mine and earn my daily bread.

The thing I've been doing this early am is to survey my property as best I can using Google maps.  I want to compare that to what I see when I get back out there.

There's probably a limit to how much you can tell from the internet, but it has its uses.

One thing about this, you can certainly spend a lot of time doing this.  Time flies by fast.


Sunday, July 27, 2014

For stocks, it could mean "Look out below!"



Gary Shilling: "Q2 GDP Was Closer To 1% Than To 3%. It Could Even Be A Negative Number"


Romney tops Obama if election held this year, but loses to Clinton

What a useless stupid poll!

It is stupid because no such matchup could occur.  Anybody can say anything about a Romney Obama rematch because it doesn't matter.  The one that does matter, Romney loses big.  To Hillary of all people.

Romney cannot run again.  But they'll probably keep pushing it anyway.  They don't call it the Stupid Party for nothing.


Leave well enough alone? Not me!

This is likely to be a complicated and maybe incoherent piece of prose.  So what else is new on this blog?  Okay, let's get down to business.  Ann Barnhardt just put up a repost of what she did maybe 3 years ago.  I've been following her about that long, not quite.

The part in the title is relevant to whether or not to respond to this.  I know I have written stuff critical of her for her tax strike.  This latest post defends her decision and does so in a way that makes me think:  should I respond or leave well enough alone?

As usual, there's plenty here that I can agree with, but then...

  • she holds us all responsible for abortion
  • she claims everyone in government knows they are illegitimate and why
  • The Republic is not dead as she claims or she would already be dead
  • Somehow her "logic" comes up with a series of conclusions that well... I don't know.  I don't "worship" the IRS or government just because I pay my taxes
The rest of what she says seems to point in the general direction that if you aren't totally perfect in all ways, you are going to hell.  If that's how she defines Christianity, she's going to lose just about everybody.  She is placing herself in a high, rarified place along with apostles and saints.  Most people are ordinary folk, sheep if you will.  If she truly wants to be that high, she has to do more than just declare a tax strike.

In my view, a tax strike is completely futile.  It won't change a thing except make her poor.  Yes, I read her entire document.  She explains why her decision is correct.  But she only makes a martyr out of herself.  What does she actually accomplish with it?

It is not completely clear that the future will unfold as she believes it will.  If it does, maybe she has a greater power than most people.  But she has been wrong before in her predictions and may well be wrong about this one.

She needs to get off her high horse.

To wit, I respond to the bulleted points above with :

  • If I am responsible for other's sins, I don't want to be a Christian.
  • She doesn't know what's in other people's heads.  She may be smart, but she doesn't read minds.
  • She's not dead yet, the Republic is still in existence.
  • I'll still pay my taxes, thank you very much.  If I can't be in her good graces because of that, then so be it.  I don't answer to Ann Barnhardt.

Sen. Lamar Alexander Faces Tough Battle in Tenn. GOP Primary

Free Republic

The two-term senator — who also has served as governor, U.S. Secretary of Education, and has run for the White House twice — has six opponents in the Aug. 7 contest, The Hill reports.--- Newsmax

Six opponents?  Why so many?  I tell you why.  This is in order to confuse the voter and divide the opposition against itself.  So, my prediction is that Alexander will win because of this very fact.

This is the pattern I'm seeing.  The so-called Tea Party is no party at all.  It is a distraction.  Utterly powerless and ineffectual.

If you ain't gonna smarten up, you might as well fold up your tents, people.

Reality check

Here's a conversion into pounds per square in per foot of water.  Keep in mind that atmospheric pressure is about 14.5 lbs per square inch at sea level.  What I'm doing here is to show that the proposition that changing the Earth's atmosphere by tiny amounts isn't going to have anything to do with the climate.

If you run the calcs, it will show that at 1 atmosphere, you will need to submerge to about 32 feet.

Consider that the ocean's average depth is 14000 feet and the oceans cover over 3/4 ths of the Earth surface, then you can calculate the average pressure per square inch of the Earths surface over that amount of surface.  This means that the average pressure on the Earth's surface in its oceans is about 418.5 atmospheres.  The rest of the Earth's surface is dry and the air pressure is by definition LESS than 1 atmosphere.  Update:  The average elevation of the dry land surface of the Earth is about 2000 feet.

When you add Carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, you exchange 1 oxygen molecule for 1 carbon dioxide molecule.  Even if you replace ALL of the Earth's oxygen with carbon, you only increase the mass by about 1/3.  This pales in comparison with the Earth's oceans as we see in the above paragraphs.

It's the Earth's oceans that trap all the energy.  The atmosphere doesn't do that very well.  Frankly, from the above, it should be easy to see that NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO TO THE ATMOSPHERE, you cannot change pressure very much.

What is the significance of this.  It is pressure that traps the heat.  Pressure is nothing more than matter piled up on itself.  The atmosphere doesn't have much of that.  The oceans DO.

Global warming is a scam.



Atmospheric water generators

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This will be added to the off the grid series.

Water is the last problem that I haven't solved yet.  What do you do for water out there in the middle of the desert?

I've been speculating about the idea of producing water from condensation of humidity from the atmosphere.  Just happens to be companies on the market, or were on the market, that produce machines that can do this.

This company is still around and is selling a model that may fit my needs.

More ideas on water collection from Treehugger dot com.

So, now I am a treehugger?!?  Bwahha ha ha ha!



Sex Trouble: Feminists Worry That Disney Movies Are Making Girls Heterosexual

Sex Trouble: Feminists Worry That Disney Movies Are Making Girls Heterosexual

comment:

Think about this for a moment.  If you can make a girl heterosexual, then can you make them homosexual?  The Feminists are contradicting the ( nowadays ) conventional wisdom that homosexuals are "born that way".  For if you can make a girl hetero, you can certainly make girls homo.  That doesn't compute, ya'll.


There's A U.S. Energy Boom, No Thanks To Obama

IBD via Instapundit

This chart shows a strong correlation between our economic troubles and our dependence upon foreign oil.  It corresponds very closely to my finding that the US GDP per capita in terms of gold peaked in 1968

source: IBD
It could be something of a paradox explained for why gold prices are not advancing in spite of the monetary expansion.  Gold prices could be going up, as well as the general price level, if that BTU chart was going down like it was for more than 30 years.  Putting it another way,the US dollar is being saved in spite of Obama's insistence upon killing it.

Incidentally, this isn't a partisan attack.  The bias has been against oil production for the last 40 years.  Something changed in the early 2000's, wouldn't you say?