Sustainability

I love the idea, and the practice is even more interesting. I have an idea of what I think “sustainability” should be but refer here(September 16, 2004) for some formal definitions. I was looking at my favourite news feed aggregator site kinja.com and found some articles on sustainability in Portland which lead me to Portland Oregon’s government agency on sustainability amazing, makes me wish I could live there… they are so many (light) years ahead of much of the *world* it is just uncanny… and takes away many excuses from those places/individuals who don’t bother.

Bangkok Baby!

Yep, the longer than usual lull in my posting is due to my head spinning. I just arrived in Bangkok last Thursday and have been working on getting accomodations (done), mobile phone (done), learn the language (not even scratched the surface), etc etc etc... it will probably take me alittle while, so all 3 of your readers out there might have to wait a bit.

Fuckthesouth.com? What gives?

Ya know, not everyone down there (this is home we are talking about) is a Bush lover, actually I seem to remember a story about a kid who committed suicide at ground Zero as a protest to bush’s re-election, he was from Georgia.

Russell Holliman over at mobilepodcast.org had an interesting point (you will have to listen to the podcast for details) about the county (I think it was the county) of the guy who posted some rant about the south.

I have little to no accent, consider myself to be right down the middle (“socially liberal, fiscally conservative”), and most of the time people can’t figure out where in the US I am from, but as soon as they here I am from the south they let into me, about the conservative, redneck (its not bad to be a redneck per se), beer swilling, truck-with-gun-rack driving, pigs… Yeah the Bushies are the majority in the south, the recent election is a very painful reminder, but the “more-holy-than-thou because I am ‘northern’” attitude just doesn’t work.

The south has plenty of redeeming features about it that are time and time again overlooked (and while *I* think it is a good thing we lost, I will remind the northerners that we tried to leave/split [and leave you to your own ideas/etc] but you guys didn’t seem to want that). If you want to call yourself some “open minded liberal/democrat” then try seeing the south (and the rest of the world) how it really is, and not as the TV media would have you see it.

"Waste recovery"

It is a Saturday (or at least is now, I’m writing this on my Treo90 and might not get around to posting it until later) in Rome, and I am heading to the office, having a life-can-be-rough-at-times moment (don’t shed too many tears for me, I’m going to go meet up with a friend in front of the coliseum at 4ish).

Anywho, the reuse of poop etc in livestock systems and increasing the efficiency of these systems has fascinated me. A component of that was feeding waste back into the systems but I had just generally referred to it as “livestock production efficiency”, seemed to be somewhat of a misnomer. I took a bit of work home and was reading a journal that made mention of “waste recovery”. Now I can say I am interested in increased livestock production system efficiency and “waste recovery”. I have always just referred to the whole thing less specifically as “efficiency”. Now I know. Sweet! (Ah the wild and crazy life of some Aggies).

Pets require responsibility

While listening to The Diane Rehm Show (broadcast on 2004-11-26) something the author said; it was something to the effect of “I am obligated to train the dog how to live in this world”. The statistics he spouted about how many people get bitten etc by (untrained) dogs and how only 3% of all dogs in the US are trained was astounding but then again unsurprising (worked in a vet clinic). That, to me, would mean that (at the risk of offending many people) 95% of the dog owners out there are irresponsible (to varying degrees of course).

He said it’s not as easy as you would think, I agree with him about say house training, but other basic commands were not that hard to train. I never gave my dog freebies, its not like I make her work all the time but if she wanted a treat she was going to have to do something; something simple like “come” or “stay” or looking before crossing the street etc.

I have often heard people say “I don’t have time”, that’s bullshit #1 if you really don’t have time then you shouldn’t have a dog, #2 I have taught my dog hand commands (think sign language) and voice commands just whenever. An example would be like after dinner (if you are easily grossed out read no further), I let her lick the plates (of course I wash the plates thoroughly afterwards but all the scraps on the plate would just go down the drain otherwise) and have her, do something before licking the plate off, its simple takes all of 5 extra seconds and reinforces the training.

Doesn't matter if its some old hunting dog or some little Chihuahua, pets DO require responsibility.

Podcasting for Aggies! (finally)

I guess I am somewhat of a minority, a guy who likes/works in Ag but also has a severe case of technolust. As a result I am constantly trying to find good, specific, RSS feeds for Ag, they barely exist, especially for specifics like ?waste recovery? or ?3^rd world animal production? (yes, these are recognized fields). I was listening to Adam Curry?s podcast the Daily Source Code and he mentioned an Ag podcast, well I rushed over to the Texas A&M AgNewsWeekly Radio site and found it. For all 5 of you techno-weenie Ag types out there, go check it out!