Locust Plagues – a curse or cure for hunger?

Over the last while there have been biblical-proportion storms of locusts in areas that are already famine-ridden.

My question is, if locusts are edible (and they are)… instead of spraying them to try to kill them, why aren’t they catching them and eating them?

Yes, the locusts devour everything they can touch, but why not turn that into a positive?

Just a thought.

EarthTainer – my customizations

The EarthTainer is a wonderful idea, but over time I think the Rubbermaid totes in the stores will get thinner and thinner (and less and less opaque) as the corporation cuts costs; this may make my tweaks required instead of preventative steps.

1.) After the main tub has been prepared (holes drilled and such) use the landscaping fabric to make an inside curtain from the top of the tote to the bottom in a full circle (if you like the look, feel free to do it on the outside – the black will absorb the heat from the sun).
This curtain should slow the sunlight and algae growth.

2.) Put in your support bench and cover all inside surfaces with the landscape fabric – much like a fabric cup. This should make it easy to pick up the soil as a package (no digging in the fall) and may keep most of the roots out of the water.

3.) Do NOT drill a hole for the feeder tube but cut an upside down U just below the bench level – best on the side facing away from the sun to slow algae and evaporation. This stiff flap stays closed until top up time.
Random tip: drill the ends of the cut so the cut doesn’t turn into a travelling crack as the plastic gets more brittle.

I plan to use a flexible hose (that’s stored away from the sun) to top up the water. I will probably have rain water in a large bucket and use a simple syphon to move the water.

Also: the second cup-like wrapping of landscape cloth will come in handy shortly… I forgot to drill holes in the bench for drainage into the water section. Heh, oops.

Dollar Store Gardening

I’m an avid fan of dollar stores, and with good reason: the ones in my area ROCK.

Here are some of my plans for uber-cheap gardening:

1 Plastic window box (these come in 1/4 round, square or long. I prefer the long ones – they disappear fast, though.)
1 nylon scrub pad cut in 2 pieces (the ones that don’t include soap)
1 packet of nasturtium seeds
1 packet of lettuce seeds
1 packet of calendula seeds
1 kid’s watering can
1 sheet of emergency blanket (the thin reflective kind. cut into smaller pieces – this is to reflect the sun back onto the plants)
1 package of bamboo sticks (the long ones – to support climbing plants OR to hold the reflective blanket)
And if I wanted to I could buy the soil in the dollar store too, but it’s cheaper in big bags.

Assembly:
Take the window box, flip it over and gently carve the recessed O’s out for drainage.
Flip it back to right side up and place the halved scrub pad over the holes; this acts as a filter to keep the soil in.
Fill with your choice of soil
Water with kid’s watering can (if you can’t get one with a sprinkling head, place a small square of scrub pad on the surface of the soil and pour on / into it; it absorbs the force of the water.)

Let your box drain for 5 minutes and then plant the seeds.
Put the box in a WARM place until the seeds germinate – the lettuce should pop out in a day, the nasturtiums shortly behind them.

Or: keep in a dark spot to encourage root growth (a day or two), then harden off or just stick them in the window.

My only concern is that the plastic may contain something that should not be in food / has chemicals the plants will absorb.

RE: Panicking about small risks, oblivious to large risks

“There are several factors involved in vaccine rejectionism. Vaccine rejectionists lack even the most basic knowledge about science, immunology, and statistics. They don’t have even rudimentary tools with which to analyze the claims of charlatans. Just like the flat earthers, they are persuaded by what “seems” reasonable to them in their limited experience.”

From: Panicking about small risks, oblivious to large risks

The first step of propaganda is to dehumanize the enemy.

Each person has their own reason to vaccinate or not, painting them with a wide brush is quite ignorant.

I would have expected better from an educated person; I am rather disappointed.

Internal US Patrol – Pastor beaten and tazed – 11 stitches

Why won’t I visit the US?

Well…. they’ll do this to an American, what will they do to a Canadian!?

[Edit] Farking WordPress wouldn’t embed the video, so here’s a link:

Baptist pastor beaten + tazed by Border patrol – 11 stitches

[Edited again on May 13, 2009] The above link goes to a video where he talks about what happened, but as a followup, here’s actual footage (!)

ACTUAL FOOTAGE Pastor Beaten & Tased by Border Patrol & DPS

The sounds he makes while he’s being tased will probably haunt me for a while.

Superstore: Tossing wilted flowers because watering is hard.

So I was shopping at Superstore, checking out the flowers, when one of the workers there was pulling all the wilted ones off and putting them in trays.

I figured he was going to go water them and put them back. A few minute’s work for a little profit and less turnover, right.

Wrong.

His job was to find the wilting flowers and to throw them out. Yeah, you read that right.

I made the obvious request – can I grab a few?

Nope.

I’d suggest someone needs to talk to the manager over this (I will soon), but knowing corporations as I do… looks like their dumpsters need to be explored.

In the meantime, I’m nauseous thinking about the pure level of mindless WASTE.

Blogger / Gmail Account Disabled?

I’m not sure what happened, but apparently my second blog under my Second Life name has been disabled. It’s odd because I’ve only made one post on the blog and I don’t think I’ve used the gmail (if it has a gmail account?).

I’ve sent in a “what the!?” email (kidding, it’s a request for clarification / dispute) and I’m hoping this will get resolved quickly.

Although… I do have my worries… there have been some pretty nasty tales about posts and accounts disappearing from Google’s Blogger site with no way to get them back.

All I wanted to do was update my blog with some more tips… *sighs*

Cannabis: Why it won’t be legalized any time soon.

There are two main reasons why cannabis won’t be legalized within the next few years:

1.) The justice system feeds people to the jails, and the latter is a very profitable business; arresting and jailing people is an industry.

Legalizing cannabis would severely cut into this industry and big industries inevitably have lobbyists; they use them like a well refined weapon against the slow moving wave of government change.

2.) The other reason cannabis won’t be legalized any time soon is the pervasive attitude from those in power. This is not limited to lower levels of gov’t, it goes all the way to the top: Obama.

It greatly disturbed me that he laughed off the #1 ranked question in his own online polls in 3 different sections: legalizing cannabis to help the economy. That Obama would treat conservative protesters (remember the town hall meetings during the election run) with more respect than thousands to millions of online people voicing their views.

To be blunt: I expected better from him.

I also fear he’s getting the Bush effect: being surrounded by people with biases that aren’t balanced and not seeing how he’s being herded away from his original intentions.

Ubuntu Computer from FreeGeek

So… my mom bought a computer from Free Geek (Vancouver) and asked me along. It’s been a while since I’ve seen my mom that anxious; she almost convinced me to get off on the wrong stop (which would have been QUITE a walk) and was generally fretting and fussing the whole trip.

I, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed the adventure. As I get older (I just turned 29 recently) I find I’m getting less and less judgemental about neighbourhoods and people yet becoming more firm in my boundaries.

Anyways, back to the computer. I convinced my mom that she really didn’t NEED to dualboot with XP for at least the next month, and to just use it as is. She’s no stranger to Ubuntu, so I doubt there will be much of a transition period.

The only issues she’s run into were preset settings on the computer – the resolution made her monitor look odd, and the keyboard was set to an odd layout.

I figured out both of these issues for her over the phone – the resolution was just a case of adjusting the monitor so she could see the menus at the top (vertical position) and then setting the resolution to her usual 1024 by whatever.

The keyboard layout was amusing – she had it set to Canada layout, which apparently means French Canadian. She HAD to change it because, apparently, there is no @ symbol in that layout. A simple change to Generic brand and USA layout fixed it easily.

Convincing her to go with the USA identity (even though it was just a keyboard layout) was the hardest part. Our family are old Empire Loyalist stock – we tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to being identified as American.

All the small drama aside, I’m sure she’s enjoying her computer.

Oh, and yes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. To see what I’ve been up to, check out my amandakerik.stumbleupon.com

Tubemogul – a flash tracker

I value my privacy quite a bit, so when I figured out how to make Flash ask me for permission to store info, I was quite pleased.

Except today… Today I’m rather annoyed. I was over at Second Life’s site trying to watch tutorials and there were 3, yes three sites asking to store info in Flash.
blip.tv (the video hosting site)
flash.quantserve.com and
tubemogul.com

The last two are trackers – they keep track of who watches what, what the person tends to watch over time, and other stats.

The problem? I had to click [Deny] to their request 3 – 5 times in a row and it was reasking me every 30 seconds.

OY! I’m trying to watch a video here, not engage in a battle of wills. Gah!

The part that annoys me the most? I can’t tell it to never ask again, like I could when blip.tv asked.

It’s not an option.

So I edited my hosts file.

No change in how it behaved (it still tries to annoy me into saying yes).

I went to the site so I could get the option to deny. Yeah, the site’s blocked editing the settings (data storage, access to mics / webcams).

So I guess the question is… how the fuck do I block this when editing my HOSTS file didn’t work!?

My computer, my connection, my choice.