PurpleMassGroup - Recent Comments

WTF!

nomad943 — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:32:07 GMT

WTF!

sleepy

irl — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:56:16 GMT

today's a really good day for sleeping in. ZZ.

Cool calendar!

Cool, irl!

John Howard — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:29:19 GMT

I made a wtf calendar to help plan your weeks.

i will be there!

irl — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:51:12 GMT

Year S is going to be **awesome**

BTW...

John Howard — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:15:37 GMT

26 Hour Alphabetic Time could be used instead of 24 Hour Time by all sorts of entities, like governments, broadcasters, internet sites, railroads, and other time-zone spanning organizations, in order to increase productivity and practically make more time in the day. Not only would it be very clear to everyone all over the world if someone gave a speech at SZZ:T, or an on-line meeting lasted from TAD:C to :E, it would seemingly create two extra hours in the day, room on the schedule for two more activities, room in the economy for two more hours of hourly jobs. If broadcast stations used it for their schedules, they could have two extra hours to program two more shows (and they'd all be slightly shorter). Magnum PI could be on at :D, and the news at :R. Local broadcast stations in different parts of the world would have their nightly news at different WTF times, as would local store and business hours, stores on the east coast might open from :C to :P, or :B to :O during the summer.

What's neat is it could free up localities to go back to Sun time, so that Noon is really when the Sun is directly overhead, and the railroad schedules could be completely independent of local time. WTF time would only be used for non-local things.

Land Of Stone Walls

nomad943 — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:08:32 GMT

History is a fine place to look for many things and maybe this is a good example. Indeed, there were farms all over the place once upon a time as evidenced by all those cool stone walls you see everyplace. I once read someplace that something around 70% of the entire state was actualy operationable fields at one point. A lot of that has grown back into woods.
But back to the point, ever notice how big of a spread a typical family farm was? Took something like 20-30 acres to support a typical family and there just isnt that much land around to support all of us at that yield rate.
Thats why efficiencies developed, it wasnt a choice, it was a requirement. People tend to adapt to what needs doing.
Right now one thing that doesnt need doing is converting the food chain into ethanol. Its ludicrous, it depletes the soil and the only way it can continue is to require the use of a whole lot of petrolium based fertilizer.
IMO there are just too many people on this planet. Thats whats going to catch up to us. But there is no reason to let stupidity speed up the matter and thats what any of these government initiatives inevitably are.

Every place on earth is going to have to be more self-sustaining

John Howard — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:43:44 GMT

and we are no exception, even though our seasons and climate are not as good as other places. We have to end factory farms. There were farms all over the place here once, and then we entered the era of industrial petroleum-based farming and Massachusetts embraced suburbia and consumerism and our special brand of manifest destiny. We shouldn't be spending our stimulus on more suburbia, bridges, interchanges, we should be preparing for the end of academic suburbia and the return of effort and work, even though it's not as efficient as getting other people to truck it to us.

This is straight James Howard Kunstler, of course, with some Jonathan Safron Foer and Micheal Pollan mixed in. We are going to need local food production, both because of Peak Oil, and because of public health. Sustainability is the new goal, not efficiency. Efficiency usually builds on layers of complexity that can tumble down fast and wear down slow, and becomes less efficient when the full cost is taken into account.

How Would That Make Any Sense?

nomad943 — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:04:24 GMT

There is already a sort of incentive in the form of chapter land, whereby owners keeping land open rather than developing it get to ride out time with a reduced property tax rate.
People arent biting.
Even with the tax incentive it makes no sense whatsoever to get slapped with the tax lien and a reduced property value. Land is going to revert to its "best use" and in New England that sure isnt farming.
The seasons are too short and the soil isnt particularly fertile. As far as efficiencies go there is no way spending government funding to create farming "opportunity" here is anything but a big waste of funds.
There are countless other things to spend it on that would make better sense. Couldnt you think of anything better? I could but then I cant stop government them from taking away our money to begin with so what do my thoughts on where the thieves should distribute the booty matter.

Yeah, that's what I mean by "create farms"

John Howard — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:07:11 GMT

We would have to reclaim land, possibly removing houses and ripping up parking lots and demolishing strip malls, or at least stop more farm land from becoming turned into subdivisions and malls. That's why it will take stimulus money, because no private investor is going to see that as a very profitable investment unless the state subsidizes it, and coordinates and organizes the eminent domain purchases where it is easiest and most practical to do.

Dont You Need Land To Farm On?

nomad943 — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 17:53:21 GMT

I admit that I have a limited understanding of farming principles but as I understand it, in order to raise crops you need to have land to plant them on.

This land:
A) must not have condos already built on it like about everything east of Worcester
or
B) must not be a solid slab of granite like about everything west of Worcester.

Thus I wonder about this topic.
I enjoy gardening but it is mostly for enjoyment as the yieleds I get are barely worth the effort and that is in good seasons (which there are so few of).
Isnt the topic of food production IN Massachusetts at best viewed as a hobby or a supplement?

Speaking of James Kunstler

John Howard — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 00:36:12 GMT

There is a nice little interview with James Kunstler in the Boston Phoenix out today, headlined "Dropping the Ball."
The first two questions:

We've just said goodbye to a trying decade. How do you see the coming years?
I think we're in for a period of hardship. A transition out of the industrial economy - into what we do not know, but it will be characterized by the downscaling of all our important daily activities. And by that, I mean the way we grow our food, the way we do trade and commerce, the way we make things, the way we do transportation, the way we inhabit the landscape, the way we acquire and deploy capital for useful purposes.
Most Americans are going to have quite a difficult time accepting this new state of affairs.
Well, tough noogies! This is one of the central delusions of the current period - that all of this stuff is a matter of choice. There's a great deal of hoping and wishing that we can maintain our standard of living. Obviously, that comes from our recent experience of extreme affluence. But we're faced with what I call the mandates of reality. And those are going to compel some outcomes that are fairly obvious at this point.