If that’s your position I wont bother reading past sentence one.

It’s exactly the same as your other mistake, claiming a billion in goods delayed in transport is the same as a billion dollar loss.

Money not spent is not the same as money lost. It’s actual money lost vs potential expenditure delayed. It’s permanent actual jobs lost vs potential temporary construction delayed (the project as planned is cancelled, not the plan to build a pipeline SOMEWHERE, and spend a billion on it, just not through reservations and sensitive watersheds on the cheap.)

The auto manufacturers will never recoup the lost production, the oil company will build a pipeline. There are costs to delays/redesign, absolutely, but they aren’t 100% of the projected project costs or anywhere close.

Have a nice day. I’ve grown tired of the merry go round. I’m pretty sure we understand each other’s positions, and don’t see progress beyond that. You insist on not seeing similarities and differences I think are incontrovertible….like the idea that a blockade of a major city, closing it down for weeks +, is far more unacceptable and inconveniences exponentially more people and business than a blockade of a railroad out in the country, or of a pipeline on tribal land by the tribe.

When you cancel a project, you don’t lose the money, you just don’t spend it. Really?!

I’m guessing you think I’m “urban” (racist code in the US btw, might wanna go with “city folk”). You would have guessed wrong. The nearest town to me is Eureka, 25k people 25 miles away.

You just don’t understand money if you insist canceling a billion dollar project is the same as losing the same amount of money. Edit: that’s only true if it’s canceled after it’s completed.
I’m using the figures Auto manufacturers gave as their lost production value, not including the collateral damage temporarily closing those plants cost the communities and both up and down supply chains.

Funny, you don’t include hospitals, which the truckers also reportedly blocked.

Protests can be permitted. If you’re disrupting someone else’s or public property without a permit, expect arrest for trespassing/breaching the peace at least.

Odd, if that’s really your position, why would you defend the truckers rights to blockade a city of worksites, job sites, and trade routes…reasons be damned?!?

I’m of the opinion that protests designed to disrupt the lives of people completely uninvolved in your cause always hurt your cause and make you look selfish. I tend to not defend self centered tantrums. I do not put pipeline protests in that category, permanent contamination of watersheds effects everyone, and almost everyone buys oil.

The Louie thing is a watershed moment in what is classified as unacceptable ... because he asked permission and they said "yes" ... but because they really /felt/ "no", it's as if they had said "no".

-scheherazade

There are hundreds/thousands of farms in my area. I don't think a single one is >1000 acres. Hundreds of families support themselves relatively well on the income they make from the smaller farms. True, you probably can't send 3 children to college on that money, but hardly anyone could these days...that's around $150k a year for 4+ years JUST for their base education. Be real, mom and pop store owners can't afford that either.

EDIT: Oh, I see, the AVERAGE is about 1000 acres....but that includes the 1000000 acre industrial farms. What is the average acreage for a "family farm" (by which I mean it's owned by the single family that lives and works on the land and supports itself on the product of that work)?

EDIT: Actually, there are thousands of 'family farms' in my area that produce more than enough product to send 3 kids to college on >5 acres with no industrialization at all (and many many more that do over use chemicals and have destroyed many of our watersheds with their toxic runoff)....I live in Humboldt county, it's easy to make a ton of money on a tiny 'farm' here...for now.

My idea of what's sustainable or good practice is based on long term personal (>33 years personally growing vegetables using both chemical and natural fertilizers) and multiple multi generational familial experiences (both mine and neighbors) AND all literature on the subject which is unequivocal that over use of chemical fertilizers damages the land and watersheds and requires more and more chemicals and excess water every year to mitigate that compounding soil damage, or leaving the field fallow long enough to wash it clean of excess salts (which then end up in the watershed).
Fertilizers carry salts. With excessive use, salts build up. Salt buildup harms crops and beneficial bacteria. Bacteria are necessary for healthy plant growth. If you and yours don't know that and act accordingly, it's astonishing your family can still farm the same land at all, you've been incredibly lucky. You either don't over use the normal salt laden chemical fertilizers on that land, or you're lying. There's simply no other option.

EDIT: It is possible that you are getting better yields for numerous reasons...."better" crop genes (both larger crops and more resistant to insects, drought, disease, etc.), better/more fertilizers, better/more pesticides, and seeing as you're in Canada, climate change. Warmer weather would absolutely give YOU better yields of almost any crop, that's not true farther South. Better yields does not mean you aren't destroying the land, BTW. It is possible to use chemicals and insane amounts of water to grow on land that's "dead", but it takes more and more chemicals and water to do, and those chemicals don't evaporate into nothing, they run off.
If you are getting better yields every year using the same methods and amounts of additives and growing the exact same crops, I'm incredibly interested in how you pull that off.

Well, I think 9/11 was probably the watershed moment there.

And lets be real, there are other reasons the US has interest in the Middle East beyond just stopping terrorism.

I love the Stewart formula. Make people laugh enough and they'll sit and listen to your sincere thoughts on anything, EVEN when you completely remove the comic veil. Not that I am at all criticising him or suggesting it is a deliberate ploy, I'm just glad somebody can say things so eloquently to an audience without it sounding like a lecture.

It's called "The Late Show", yet they have to bleep out (or blank out in this case) "asshole"? Is it actually on late, or is it on at 6:00 pm or something? Doesn't the US have a watershed period?

I will be dead, but it scares me to think what jobs the un-educated will be able to do in 50 years.


I don't think it'll take that long before this becomes a much bigger issue.

Right now there's a few important barriers that are holding back a huge flood of automation: driving on public roads, recognizing and handling awkward materials, interfacing in delicate, safe ways with people (and recognizing their subtle cues for motion, etc..). We could see computers solving most of those challenges to acceptable levels in the next 5-10 years.

I think driving will be a big watershed. Once you meet that kind of competence standard reliably - once people put their lives in the hands of automated judgement like this - I think you could see large percentages of jobs go very quickly. I'm not just thinking of unskilled jobs either.

For example, there's no reason a computer couldn't handle a good percentage of optometrist visits right now (with humans only required in odder scenarios). All that's stopping it is a lack of public confidence - but, again, once robots are driving I think people will come to accept them in all sorts of scenarios... and it'll spiral out very quickly.

Things are going to have to change a lot in terms of what we expect people to do all their lives, and what it means to contribute your share to the economy. Once it starts I think it's going to change very quickly.

Great report on the situation in the Mackenzie River watershed. *Promote.

Maybe. The alternative view is that this was a watershed moment and the internets will always win: http://johnquiggin.com/2012/01/19/the-internet-is-like-a-million-page-a-second-photocopier-or-is-that-a-series-of-tubes/

I am always in two minds about posting these sort of videos, but in the end I posted this one because:

1. It's not visually graphic. While you *know* people died in what you just saw, you can't really see it.
2. This footage has been playing on news reports on TV all day today, without warnings or after "watershed" hours.
3. It's news.

If the footage broke any of the above three points, I probably wouldn't have posted it.

Yeah but we needed this chaos. The previous season were so dull that i didn't even watch all the races, something i haven't done since 1991. There has always been these watershed moments in F1; teams coming up with groundbreaking inventions and FIA regulating them.. Just think ground effect, active suspensions, turbos all of them effectively changing the sport at the time. This is not the first time FIA introduces new stuff but this time they made the cars faster instead slower, as the main trend has been.

But the main thing is to listen to drivers and they all like this season a lot! Chaos brings life to stagnation..

They're just starting in Michigan now.

http://www.cleanwateraction.org/feature/rush-drill-threatens-michigan%E2%80%99s-water-and-quality-life

Unfortunately, the economic situation in many states is forcing mineral rights sales...fun times. I can't see how risking contamination of as much fresh water as is in question here can possibly be a good idea for anyone. Can you imagine the economic damage that comes with entire areas of the country having unsafe drinking water?

There needs to be some sort of standard punishment for causing long-term damage to any public system, whether it's economic or environmental. The fact that the gas companies can do this or banks can do similar things economically and get away with executive bonuses and such is simply intolerable. In the case of fracking, even if some case were somehow brought against Halliburton can you even put a true dollar amount on the damages you'd be responsible for as a corporation when you're talking about an entire aquifer or watershed?

>> ^mgittle:

>> ^heathen:
I'd guess pesticides, sprayed from a crop duster. The plane may have flown over where the birds were roosting. Then later the pesticides could have washed into the river, killing the fish mentioned in Deathcow's linked article.

Except as was pointed out, pollutants would have affected multiple fish species instead of only one. Also, I'd guess that it would be quite unlikely for pesticides sprayed in the air to travel 125 miles without dispersing to really low concentrations unless the initial concentration/quantity was ridiculously high. Plus, even if some chemical in the air reached the ground in a concentrated amount, it's also highly unlikely that, specific crazy topography aside, the local watershed could move the chemical 125 miles in the time span in question.
Until more info, I'd stick with the "unrelated" hypothesis.


Yeah, I was suggesting the fish were poisoned in the river near the spraying site and then swam to Ozark before dying, not that the pesticides were carried on the wind for 125 miles.

I also agree the watershed couldn't move the pollutants that far, especially since Google tells me the Arkasas river flows in the wrong direction.

Pollutants are certainly likely to affect multiple fish species, however they don't have to affect them all the same way, or with the same severity. For example, maybe fish larger than the drum didn't receive a large enough dose to kill them, or smaller fish were able to survive as they required less oxygen in the water.

As you say, it may just be an unrelated co-incidence. However, with that many animals dying in such a short time frame, I'd personally hope it was a one-off mistake than something that could occur twice in such a small area, within a day of each other.

>> ^heathen:

I'd guess pesticides, sprayed from a crop duster. The plane may have flown over where the birds were roosting. Then later the pesticides could have washed into the river, killing the fish mentioned in Deathcow's linked article.


Except as was pointed out, pollutants would have affected multiple fish species instead of only one. Also, I'd guess that it would be quite unlikely for pesticides sprayed in the air to travel 125 miles without dispersing to really low concentrations unless the initial concentration/quantity was ridiculously high. Plus, even if some chemical in the air reached the ground in a concentrated amount, it's also highly unlikely that, specific crazy topography aside, the local watershed could move the chemical 125 miles in the time span in question.

Until more info, I'd stick with the "unrelated" hypothesis.

>> ^RadHazG:

Ah the FCC. Keeping everyone safe from those dirty dirty harmful words. Without them, surely we would all be robbing, looting, and killing everything in sight.
Also: we all know the "real" words. Everyone does, without exception (because if everyone didn't, bleeping them would be pointless). So every time anyone see's this stuff, they hear "monday to friday!" their brain translates "fucking!". So in reality the FCC is even more pointless than its already pointless (and in my opinion unconstitutional) existence.


There's definitely good reason to have the public have some control over the quality of content on the public airwaves. There's a very finite amount of bandwidth that we, ahem, rent to companies and if we just let it go completely free market, it'd all be pornography.

Of course what the FCC does in practice is ridiculous. I wish they'd pay more attention to content before the watershed and less attention to four letter words. When I lived in Los Angeles, you could see four women and one man in a hot tub making out and suggesting the things they'd do later on Elimidate right when kids got home from school. No 'F' words, but I'd really hate my kids watching that every day.