Sunday, January 11, 2009

Sure, he may be a hit man, but where did his nickname come from?

Internet Source 1. 
...
Anthony "Tony Roach" Rampino, whose physical features led to his nickname...

Internet Source 2.

He was never inducted into the Mafia because of his heavy drug use. He reportedly earned the nickname 'The Roach' because he smoked every bit of a marijuana joint.

Frish says:
A confederate of John Gotti's, Tony "The Roach" has served 10 years for for selling a Kilo of Heroin to an undercover cop, and may gain his freedom if the Judge decides he can go with time served.  He's never been indicted for several suspected killings.

I believe source two as to his nickname but cannot confirm.

I don't do internet games...

Crazy Peanuts

Flick the peanuts at the squirrels.

Never played the game, or visited the website, but, I really liked the copy on this one.
 
I played real live pin ball machines, 30 years ago.
 
I saw the first pong games going into bowling alleys, but didn't find them engaging.
 
Since then, I have not played electronic games much.
 
Had a chance to interact with a Nintendo of some ilk on Friday last.
Liked the picture chat.
 
I do play bridge online, so I guess I do play electronic games. 
Not quite the same, although sometimes it does feel like a car chase or they are trying to shoot me!
Frish

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Straight from the heart

I'm thinking of you
as I trend towards sleeping
and dreaming of you

Frish's Missing Link Theory! (Copyright 07052005)

Quote in entirety permitted
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1. Earth supplied the NATURAL components needed to have life happen here.

2. Life is a GEOLOGIC process. Biology is a natural outcome of geology.

2a. Life uses energy and chemistry to process organic and inorganic chemicals. Life is most essentially digesting the planet Earth and the potential energy provided by Earth's chemistry.

3. That's Life.

4. Monkeys obey the golden rule. They are social primates. They do unto others (pick lice for one thing), as they would have others do unto them (pick lice for one thing). Monkeys (and humans) are social primates, DEPENDENT AND RELIANT on each other.

5. The GOLDEN RULE IS BUILT IN to human-kind. Any charlatan can claim it for his or her own, as it is built-in! This fact may be one more than can be contained in a "true-believer"'s head, but morality comes built into humans, almost all of us act "right" almost all the time.

6. Humans and our technology evolved to dig up oil which is just what is needed for the next stage of life's evolution on the planet.

7. Humans have served their function and will be recycled into the ever active treadmill of chemicals and geologic processes that fluxes upon the Earth at all times.

8. “Live long and die off!”

The only moral choice... www.vhemt.org

Monday, January 5, 2009

From the NYTimes..."our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable."

A 50-Year Farm Bill

By WES JACKSON and WENDELL BERRY

Published: January 4, 2009

THE extraordinary rainstorms last June caused catastrophic soil erosion in the grain lands of Iowa, where there were gullies 200 feet wide. But even worse damage is done over the long term under normal rainfall — by the little rills and sheets of erosion on incompletely covered or denuded cropland, and by various degradations resulting from industrial procedures and technologies alien to both agriculture and nature.

Soil that is used and abused in this way is as nonrenewable as (and far more valuable than) oil. Unlike oil, it has no technological substitute — and no powerful friends in the halls of government.

Agriculture has too often involved an insupportable abuse and waste of soil, ever since the first farmers took away the soil-saving cover and roots of perennial plants. Civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland. This irremediable loss, never enough noticed, has been made worse by the huge monocultures and continuous soil-exposure of the agriculture we now practice.

To the problem of soil loss, the industrialization of agriculture has added pollution by toxic chemicals, now universally present in our farmlands and streams. Some of this toxicity is associated with the widely acclaimed method of minimum tillage. We should not poison our soils to save them.

Industrial agricultural has made our food supply entirely dependent on fossil fuels and, by substituting technological "solutions" for human work and care, has virtually destroyed the cultures of husbandry (imperfect as they may have been) once indigenous to family farms and farming neighborhoods.

Clearly, our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable. We must restore ecological health to our agricultural landscapes, as well as economic and cultural stability to our rural communities.

For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. That is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billons of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.

Any restorations will require, above all else, a substantial increase in the acreages of perennial plants. The most immediately practicable way of doing this is to go back to crop rotations that include hay, pasture and grazing animals.

But a more radical response is necessary if we are to keep eating and preserve our land at the same time. In fact, research in Canada, Australia, China and the United States over the last 30 years suggests that perennialization of the major grain crops like wheat, rice, sorghum and sunflowers can be developed in the foreseeable future. By increasing the use of mixtures of grain-bearing perennials, we can better protect the soil and substantially reduce greenhouse gases, fossil-fuel use and toxic pollution.

Carbon sequestration would increase, and the husbandry of water and soil nutrients would become much more efficient. And with an increase in the use of perennial plants and grazing animals would come more employment opportunities in agriculture — provided, of course, that farmers would be paid justly for their work and their goods.

Thoughtful farmers and consumers everywhere are already making many necessary changes in the production and marketing of food. But we also need a national agricultural policy that is based upon ecological principles. We need a 50-year farm bill that addresses forthrightly the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.

This is a political issue, certainly, but it far transcends the farm politics we are used to. It is an issue as close to every one of us as our own stomachs.

Wes Jackson is a plant geneticist and president of The Land Institute in Salina, Kan. Wendell Berry is a farmer and writer in Port Royal, Ky.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 5, 2009, on page A21 of the New York edition.


FRISH SAYS:

THE USA FOOD EXPORTED ABOUT 3 BILLION DOLLARS per month net IN 2008.

NOT A LOT OF ECONOMIC INCENTIVE FOR AGRIBUSINESS TO SLOW OR STOP ANY 'UNSUSTAINABLE' WAYS SINCE THEY ARE ENJOYING THE QUARTER BY QUARTER PROFITS.

CAN ANYONE BELIEVE THAT A WORTHWHILE 50 YEAR FARM PLAN WOULD BE ACCEPTED BY AGRIBUSINESS?

LOVED THAT LINE "perennialization of the major grain crops like wheat, rice, sorghum and sunflowers can be developed in the foreseeable future" WITHOUT ANY INDICATION THAT THEY WILL BE! 

CONSIDER, IF THAT UPSETS PROFITS (SEEDS DON'T NEED TO BE SOLD EVERY YEAR FOR EXAMPLE!) WILL THEY EVER BE DEVELOPED??

NO MENTION OF HOW THOSE NEWLY PERENNIALIZED CROPS WOULD REDUCE THE RISK TO PESTS AND/OR DISEASE THAT MONOCULTURE AGRICULTURE ALREADY EXHIBITS!

NO MENTION THAT THERE ARE WAY TOO MANY HUMANS ON THE PLANET OF COURSE.

Believe, brother, believe!

Friday, January 2, 2009

Some gender blending photos from New Year's Eve 2009

Paul? Or Paula?

We were at a restaurant.

Paul and Sylvia arrived late.

We all had fun!

Succinct explanation of our unsustainable economy with cameo by Charlton Hester

http://vhemt.org/cornucopian.htm

Don't write if you get the Soylent Green reference.

Hi

We're off to costco
conspicuous consumption
Me, Mom, The Prius

Baby Triple Header from Yahoo! (fyi - not "3 headed baby from Enquirer")

Family's unusual twins

A mixed-race couple welcomes home their second set of incredibly rare twin daughters. » One black, one white

http://www.yahoo.com/s/1010173

(Copied from Yahoo! news homepage today 1/02/2009
As of 11:29 a.m. PST)

Humor powered by Frish

Thursday, January 1, 2009

From a recent post on some forlorn website...

I don't have to justify the contents of my e-mails to you, the likes of you or anyone.
 
Maybe you heard of the concept:  freedom of speech.  You'll find it in both the united States and California constitutions.
 
Where do you get off calling me a troll of any kind?
 
If I want to be argumentative, I don't need your useless permission to do so.

Ya can't make this stuff up!  Frish