Sunday, April 28, 2013
Interesting Statistics
WORLD MURDER STATISTICS From the World Health Organization: The latest Murder Statistics for the world: Murders per 100,000 citizens.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
When Environmental Programs Backfire
In a recent New York Times article - Foul Algae in Lake Erie - the culprit which is causing the massive algae blooms in Lake Erie these days is a type of farming that is being promoted heavily by environmental specialists. No-till farming might help with erosion but it’s hell when it comes to water quality. The problem with no-till farming, in which seeds are inserted into small holes in unplowed ground is that fertilizing is contracted to companies that cast pellets onto the bare ground from trucks, or to “factory farms” that spray liquefied animal waste on the cropland.
In the past those fertilizer pellets sank into plowed soil and stayed there. Now, rain and snowmelt wash an average of one pound of the 48 pounds per acre of fertilizer off the unplowed soil. Much winds up in the Maumee River, which feeds into Lake Erie.
The Maumee supplies only about 5 percent of Erie’s water, but half its phosphorus. And while algae struggle to digest ordinary phosphorus — only about 30 percent gets taken up — fertilizer phosphorus is designed for plants to use instantly. This means there’s vastly more algae in Lake Erie now than there was before the no-till farming practices.
My favorite environmental plague is the wind generators. These bird killing machines are a blight on the landscape and really tough on bird populations but according to my environmental friends there are going to be some casualties of nature if we are to get off the carbon based fuels that feed our country and eventually we’ll figure out a way to make the big wind turbines prettier as well as more eco-friendly to the avian population. Until then we just have to bite our lip and put up with the massive deaths of birds and the visual ugliness of the landscape.
The way we manage forests has changed dramatically from my early years of grouse hunting. There used to be clear cut regions and you never see that anymore. The forest biologists require logging operations to use a more selective approach before issuing permits and now we have more older forests that favor turkeys over grouse. This might seem like a wonderful thing for turkey hunters but for guys like me that love to hunt grouse it’s the sad result of environmentalists giving clear-cut forestry a bad reputation.
Have you changed all your incandescent bulbs out to the florescent lamps yet? This is yet another environmental program that forces one to ignore the casualty of mercury polluting the earth for the greater good which is less carbon emissions.
What we’re dealing with here is a tremendous amount of head-in-the-sand logic that creates consequences we shouldn’t have to live with. At some point we need to realize that some of the actions we take to make the world a better place is in fact making it worse and just because the effort falls into the realm of good environmental deeds doesn’t mean we shouldn’t analyze what is happening and make changes if necessary. Maybe the true solutions, like ground tilling, nuclear power generation, clear cutting, and the more-expensive LED lights haven’t been hitched tightly enough to the environmentalist’s wagon. When the ravages of these good intentions expand to the point of no return, we might see changes backwards to move things forward again.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
They All Think We're Cowboys
I lived for a year in England during the late ninties. I traveled throughout western Europe and the British Isles during that time, and I got plenty of laughs from the perceptions people had of Americans. The notion that we’re all a bunch of gun-toting cowboys taking potshots at anyone who gets in our way was one of my favorites. Much of what the Europeans speculated about our lifestyle was driven by television programs and news portrayals. George W. was our president at the time and he was considered the King of Cowboys.
It’s fifteen years later and we’re no longer cowboys to the foreigners . In their eyes now we’re wannabe soldiers buying up battlefield weaponry and shooting at everything that moves. Until we forgo television programs that feature shoot-outs and replace this with loads of gratuitous sex we will always be a few steps below them on their evolutionary ladder.
I did some hunting and shooting while in Europe. These sports are either heavily regulated or limited to those with fortunes. Even carrying a folding-blade pocket knife in England like the one I carry here in the U.S. would have gotten me into trouble with the law.
This is the problem with Europe and even Canada. Personal protection is not an option for the individual. If you shoot or stab someone in self-defense there, you are going to be in big trouble. In England in 1999 Tony Martin shot a man who broke into his home and he was convicted of murder and sent to prison.
Just two years ago in Ontario, Canada a man fired shots at three masked individuals who were firebombing his home. He had video of this happening, yet the authorities there confiscated all of his firearms and threatened him with jail time. His attackers were never caught, although it seems pretty obvious who they were, and now those local terrorists know their target is unarmed and vulnerable.
Fortunately I live in America. We have a constitution that says we can own guns and protect ourselves. Now some would say there should be restriction. No large magazines. No guns that look like military weapons. Some would ban all pistols. They want these regulations to save a few lives that are tragically taken by insane individuals that can be best described as ticking time bombs. Good intentions; maybe, but the results will be do-nothing restrictions on those that would obey such regulations and opportunities for those that wouldn’t, and no killings, not a single one, will be stopped by additional laws that build on the thousands we already have on the books.
Chances of me ever having to defend myself with a firearm are miniscule. But, should the need ever arise I don’t want my assailant knowing I have a limited amount of bullets in a gun that is marginal for self defense. I want him to think I have massive magazines bulging with bullets in guns that drug cartels would drool over. And I don’t want state or federal regulations restricting my access to that which is currently legal, just so politicians can pander for votes, passing worthless legislation that will have absolutely no affect on the problem. What has ignorant legislation ever accomplished other than to create more criminals and make people less safe from criminal elements? There are many examples of this outside our borders to take lessons from.
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