20 December 2008

19 December 2008

BIG brother

This is priceless. I honestly believe that we're in the opening stages of the collapse of Western Civilization. Freedom is being abolished in the names of safety and the collective.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/18/new.york.budget/index.html

The masses are drunk off of affluence and entertainment - they're unwilling to risk their comfort and demand their freedoms. The American train has derailed and is headed straight for a brick wall. It's time to jump off, but where can one go? In my opinion, the only reasonable alternatives are Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Unfortunately, those places are farther down the path to collectivism than the United States! There is no escaping this issue. One might limit its effects by moving to a more classically liberal region, but they would still be putting a Band-Aid on the problem.

Difficult questions, difficult answers.

addendum:

Great sites relating to this post...

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/24/75-threatening-to-move-to-canada/
http://www.slate.com/id/2202070/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-notte/where-will-conservatives_b_144524.html

Schneefall


We're in the middle of another pretty good snowstorm for our area.

14 December 2008

Hockey Pond

This post is borne out of my search for information on how to build a pond solely for the purpose of playing hockey.

(Yeah, I love playing hockey that much.)

The ponds on which I currently play have a number of drawbacks. Our favored location (a friend's pond) was built for hockey and swimming. It is NHL regulation size and between 1 and 4 meters deep. It is also 20 minutes from my house. It sounds great, but its inflow keeps it from freezing on one end (and occasionally floods the ice), and its depth makes it the last of our playing areas to freeze. I have a pond on my farm, but it also has a number of drawbacks. For starters, it's located a quarter of a mile uphill from my house. That distance prohibits a morning skate before work or an evening skate before dark. Other problems include its small size (a circle about 15 m in diameter) and its tendency to silt up. As a result of these difficulties, I have begun planning der Über Teich - the Super Pond.

The hypothetical Super Pond has a number of attributes. It has a rounded rectangular surface area of 20 m x 40 m. It freezes early in the season and thaws late in the season. It freezes completely - it does not have places of weak or thin ice. It is located within 200 meters of my house. It is located "close to" a water source (to facilitate resurfacing). It does not require periodic silt removal.

When I list the attributes, it doesn't sound very difficult. Unfortunately, it's a lot more complicated than that. What type of pond is appropriate? If I locate it in a wet spot, will it remain filled? Will the soil support a pond? Will it require a clay liner? If it's located in a natural funnel, will I have a problem with silting? Will the inflow end freeze? Will the ice be flooded by mid-winter thaws? How deep should the pond be?

Now it sounds a little more complicated.

These are just some of the questions that require answering before I can begin construction of a pond. I have intensively searched the internet, but I have not found a website with the answers I am looking for. Next spring I will contact my county soil and water conservation office. They are supposed experts on pond construction, and I plan to make full use of their knowledge.

In the mean time, I'll continue to hope for cold days and even colder nights.

Glory!

We were dumped on (by last year's standards) with 15 cm of snow last Thursday/Friday! For the first time this season it was really a winter wonderland. Ironically, the weathermen had forecast a bunch of freezing rain just a day before the storm. They weren't completely wrong, because that's what we got for about 4 or 5 hours. However, after a solid layer of ice accumulated, we were blessed with close to six inches of the white stuff. As I LOVE to snowshoe, I walked about a mile through the woods on Friday afternoon - pure bliss.

08 December 2008

Two thoughts...

Thought 1:

Incredibly for this time of year, snow has fallen 20 of the past 23 days. That total will probably become 21 of 24 after tomorrow, though the storm that will start as snow is forecast to turn to ice and, eventually, rain.

Also incredibly, during those past 23 days, we have only received 22 centimeters (about 9 inches) of snow. Almost all of that came during a week-long stretch in mid-to-late November. Though it has snowed 11 of the last 13 days, we've only had 4 centimeters (less than 2 inches) during that time. (and I was VERY generous with the totals) There has not been complete snow cover since November 29, and it appears that the next 10 days will be the warmest in a month. Are we heading toward our fifth consecutive brown Christmas?

Thought 2:

My sister-in-law was over this past weekend, and she made a passing comment that got under my skin. We were discussing this story when she threw in the old, "We have to bring in [illegal immigrants] because no one else will work those jobs." At the time I told her that I disagreed and simply left it at that. However, as I thought about it later, the comment began to irritate me even more.

It is my opinion that people who need to work will (1) take any job they can get and (2) work hard to keep that job. In the state of New York, people do not need to work. Why? Welfare. Low-income residents in New York are often eligible for one or more of the following benefits: welfare payments, unemployment payments, WIC (food stamps for women, infants, and children), food stamps (conventional), HEAP (home energy assistance program = free or reduced home heating), HUD rental assistance (federal program), medicaid (free healthcare). I am aware of single-parent families that subsist entirely on public benefits. Since their needs are completely met by the government, they do not need to work. The result? Many impoverished citizens choose not to take menial jobs. Often, those jobs are filled by illegal immigrants...

So, we've established what's happening, but what about what to do about it? It is my opinion that a significant reduction in spending on public benefits could rectify the problem. Stop redistributing money to those who made poor choices with their lives. Start forcing those people to choose between working at eating and not working and starving. I would be willing to bet that those previously undesireable jobs would become hot commodities. Yes, there would be people that choose to starve to death. That is their choice. Perhaps then our children would begin to understand why they need to do well in school. Perhaps our workers would begin to understand that work is for working, not sitting on your duff and looking at pornography online.

Maybe I'm an idiot for thinking that significantly reducing public benefits would be a "magic bullet" against our society's ills. I know it wouldn't cure all of our problems, but maybe it would be a start. At this point, that's all you can hope for.