Recycled

After my last back, butt and ball waxing, it became apparent that I'm just too jumpy and stressed out. I went to get a soothing herbal colonic, but just couldn't decide which music to listen to while being clensed. Yanni's a bit stale, and the old stand-by water and wind sounds just don't do it for me anymore. What does everyone else listen to while getting your colonics done? BTW, I tried the Pretenders, but I just jumped around too much with sad consequences.

Just strip the metals and grind everything else up for animal feed or soil amendment. Only the real lardasses would be worth converting to biodiesel. Come to think of it, the last batch of recycled biodiesel I put in my car smelled a bit funky. I better do some checking.

Well, I'm a solid waste consultant. I mostly deal with regular garbage, recycling and composting, but sometimes drift into more interesting territory like sewage sludge, fish/poultry morts and such.

Stainless steel, gold and/or silver aren't magnetic. Bet they sift or use an eddy current separator.

In response to Arch's question: the technical term is flensing, or carcass stripping if you prefer. Little know fact: cremation is reponsible for a big chunk of airborne mercury emissions in western Washinton. My wife and I have a deal to make sure our fillings are pulled before we're toasted. Of course, that's probably more than everyone needs to know. That is all. Carry on.

Thanks MC! Any other junk ropes in Bellingham?

I'd a couple FREE retired >=10mm ropes to use as back-up lines on my boat. PM me if anyone in B'ham wants to find a home for their retired ropes. Thanks!

Waiting for the Enumclaw jokes........

I buy the biodiesel from Dr. Dan's in Ballard. I buy about 100 gallons at a time (in my own jugs) when I'm down on Seattle on other business. It's about $3.20/gallon right now. I wouldn't suggest making your own unless you really know what you're doing and/or have a really old funky rig you don't care about.

I have two TDIs and use 100% biodiesel in both, except in the middle of winter. I highly recommend them, since they not only fuel efficient, run forever, and also allow the use of non-petro fuel. They're also a blast to drive is you stay away from the automatic transmissions. HOWEVER, they have very low ground clearance and an aluminum oil pan. They do fine on 95% of the mountain roads, but there's that 5% of the time that you can't get where you want. (e.g. Twin Lakes Road approach to Larrabee, etc). To deal with that I have a funky old Trooper that works for off-road and the unmaintained/deactivated roads common in B.C. I only drive the Trooper about 1000 miles a year, so its poor gas mileage doesn't really matter. I suspect that the hybids also have really low ground clearence, since that helps with the overall mileage figures.

I'm sure that the 35 hours work week in France created a lot of jobs for under/unemployed hoods. France has such a history of legitimate street protests that they have a hard time figuring out how to deal with thugs using riots as a cover for mayhem. Kinda a cultural thing, I believe.

Bellingham: Banditos for the best burritos. Casa Que Pasa was good back when it opened, but it's pretty nasty now. Little Cheerful used to be good for lunch, but haven't gone there much lately.

That jack must be about 5' long. What kind of holes does he think he's going to find around here? I guess he's been schooled a bit. Time to upgrade to a Unimog. No jack needed.

If there's a heavy snow year, the avalanche chutes sweeping across Ruth Creek get thick enough to provide an easy approach from the Hannegan trail to the Sefrit Ridge line in a straight shot. There's usually a sweet spot in the Spring after the snow sets up, but before it melts out and the bridges across Ruth collapse. Later in the Spring, the slabby/brushy crap on Sefrit gets really unpleasant. It's an incredible area, especially considering how easy it is to get to under the right conditions.

Was editing as you posted. Too bad the pile is out east. Could be an interesting pile of stuff.

The Army's has just surplused some crampons, pitons and and ice screws. They only paid $6500.00 for the lot, so try your luck and see whether you can pick it up for $0.50. http://cgi.govliquidation.com/auction/view?id=708189

Or maybe undersexed and overnourished.

So, is public access to science via the internet a bad thing? Sure there's a lot of crap and noise out there, but on the up side I can do a lot of research from original peer-reviewed (as well as non-reviewed) documents to help better understand an issue. I live in Bellingham and my wife and I honestly had a hard time deciding which way to vote, and we both have scientific/technological backgrounds. There's a lot to the flouride debate. The scientific establishment does not always makes the right decisions, and it is arrogant to presume that "science" always knows best. It seems to me that the biggest educational failing is making sure that the public at large has a better understanding of just what the scientific method really is to better understand the differences between hypothesis testing and faith, and to tell bullshit armwaving from reasoned argument.

Yeah, but 99's still with us and looking good!

Marie, I just got the reponse you originally forwarded. Thanks! I decided to rent a car and hit the Alps from all sides. I'll mostly car camp and stay at hostels. If the weather turns crappy, I'll just get a cheap flight to Paris and hang until the weather clears. Woohoo!

I'm pretty lucky. I work at home (as does my wife), I can walk to my kid's school, I have plenty of survival skills (life maintenance as well as heavy equipment operation, shelter construction and such). The closest building over 15 storeys is about 50 miles away. I do have meetings in downtown Seattle every couple weeks and I would be pretty much screwed if something happened then. I would try like hell to get north of the ship canal and start banging on friend's doors, since I grew up there. Going solo and fast in those circumstances is the luxury of being male, big and ugly. If I were female, I would imagine having to immediately group together and start making defensive plans and coming up with a stategy for getting to a safe place as fast as possible. That's probably happened quite a lot in New Orleans. Sucks, but could be a reality if things really turn to shit, you're downtown and night hits. Think how much Seattle gets screwed up with a foot of snow! So long sukkas! I'm off to Chamonix for two weeks.

"Keeping Order" sounds slightly quaint and sinister by turns, but it obviously matters. While I agree that people should be able to do what they need to survive within reason, there is a certain population that will use blackouts, floods, earthquakes, etc. to go wild. They probably don't have a whole lot to lose and are just itching to use any advantageous situation. How do you deal with those people while not violating the rights of people simply trying to survive and who still respect the rights of others? The fact is, there are a lot of violent thuggish people out there that are kept "in line" by policing and limited opportunities for thuggary. They will think nothing of rape or murder (if given the opportunity without consequences). Perhaps its time to reconsider your disaster survival plans: Survival plan #1: Keep loaded weapons and spare ammo handy, and then get what you want from the sheeple. Food, water, sex can be had in abundance. Survival plan #2: Store up spare food, water, supplies. Be self-sufficient and then wait for those operating under survival plan #1 to break your door down and rape/kill you. Seems like the best strategy (to me at least) would be Survival Plan #2 + weapons + coordinated plannning by immediate neighbors. Of course, if you have weapons, you need to be mentally ready to use them and ready to mentally process friend, foe or someone that just needs a bit of help. This line of thought gets very disturbing very fast!

Now, to really stir the shit up: From New Orleans Craigslist by Robert Tracinski | The Intellectual Activist September 2, 2005 It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster. If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild. Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting. But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster. The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong. The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view. The man-made disaster is the welfare state. For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country. When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11). So what explains the chaos in New Orleans? To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story: "Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on. "The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire.... "Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders. "'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' " The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad. What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome? Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them? My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.) What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa. There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves. All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency. No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism. What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men. But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them. The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting. Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

There's looting and then there's looting. I suspect that there was a certain element that were rubbing their hands with glee when the evacuation order came through. They were first in line to loot pharmacies, hospitals, electronics stores and to grab the most they could as soon as most people were out of the way. That's a far cry from people needing food, water and shelter in a natural disaster and getting it from stores and other stockpiles. The former seems to represent most of the violence and intentional property damage and IMHO should garner a strong response. The latter is just plain commen sense.

So, suppose there's a massive natural disaster and after a few days things go wild: shooting at aid helos and police, rapes, looting, setting the city on fire and such. At what point is serious martial law acceptable? Do the gangs of hoods have a right to due process? Who makes that call and how does the revised "rules of engagement" get out to everyone before the military just starts shooting? My fascist side wonders why, when police are holed up on a roof under attack and people are shooting at aid helicopters, a Cobra isn't sent in to hose the fuckers? My libertarian side wonders what the self-defense rules of engagement would be if a roving gang headed toward my house. Do I need to wait until they actively threaten my life or do I just start shooting. New Orleans is a really rough town, so it's probably an extreme...but maybe not. Chilliwack might be just as scary.