mojeaux131

just when i was getting all excited about a place that has both beer and crawfish... zannen...

Yeah, it is nice. "[w]onderful staff"? Do you live there?

Of course you wouldn't because he most likely doesn't live near an existing line. When I used to argue with my friends about rail, they'd always say something like, "It doesn't go anywhere! It should go to the suburbs or something." Of course I would then have to reiterate for the fourth time that it has to be a little before it can be a lot. Edit: I totally forgot Metro includes buses. My bad. Still though, that flawed logic I mentioned was both prevalent and stupifying.

IMHO, these are the best pictures of the park so far. I like how you got pictures from different areas of the park. Sugoi!

Or maybe it's as Grandpa Simpson would say: "A little from column A, a little from column B."

Shweet. Gracias.

Yeah, I think one person who commented referred to the article as "Gorebage".

Does anybody know how many Superfund sites there are in Houston? How do they differ from brownfields? Is it an issue of severity/toxicity?

Silver lining Harris County, the nation's biggest producer of greenhouse gases, is a logical place to center carbon trading. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/5716236.html Hmm...

Yeah, I thought about that when I was writing the post. I made use of the term really just because "all or nothing" is one of those set phrases. Sorry if that gave the wrong impression.

As for the first citation I used, I was showing the origins of the two terms and correcting your definition, since the terms are Greek in origin and the citation has them quoted in their original context (albeit translated). As for the second citation, I was defending my use of the terms by showing their appearance in an academic paper written by someone with a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics, which I thought might have some relevance to our discussion. I'm sorry these people do not meet your personal standards for academic credibility. Other than that, I see little point in continuing the discussion from an economical point of view, which you seem to be fond of doing. You are very knowledgeable. Good for you. From what little I know of economics, I'll spell out one more time why I think we should try to change how we're doing things. a. Current modes of production are more or less dependent on a finite resource (petroleum). Verdict: We must change modes of production to be dependent on the best source of energy for agriculture: the sun. b. Current modes of production incur large costs that are not accounted for in pricing. Verdict: We must account for these costs and therefore change modes of production to be less costly, and eventually to have no ecological cost. This is entirely feasible given organisms' capacity to recycle matter and waste into useful products. c. Current modes of production depend on large government subsidies. Verdict: Modes of production must be altered so that those engaged in farming profit from their labor without government aid. Also, this will provide incentives for young people to enter such professions. I don't know how these things can be done, but I have a few ideas, and I've already shared them on this thread. I believe the most important thing is just for people to realize that we can't continue to do things the same way they were done in the 20th century. Who knows, maybe those people with their heads stuck in the sand who think things are just fine the way they are are actually environmental extremists who wish to bring about human extinction and thus return the planet to its pristine, pre-human condition. Maybe that's why from the outset of any discussion that involves environmental concerns, they jump in with pessimism and loaded terms. And then sometimes they seek to obfuscate the discussion by utilizing jargon and reducing the main ideas to clumps of minutiae, not that I'm pointing any fingers. Edit: I might be guilty of utilizing jargon in this thread, but I'm only trying to clarify my position when I do it. I'm of the opinion that being mindful of our impact on natural (sorry, memebag) er-ecological, non-human systems and working to integrate our decisions into the natural (pre-human) order is of great importance and eventual benefit to humankind. To paraphrase Dr. John Ikerd, intelligent anthropocentric beliefs are actually ecocentric. (Cuz memebag was right! Humans are totally part of nature!) Please see above. If you are interested in continuing this conversation, you might want to try and convince me why feeding cows food that makes them sick and necessitates antibiotics is a good thing, or why it's okay that we use 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy in mechanized agriculture. Please don't hurt my head anymore with your gobbledygook. How do you know how most people would perceive gardening? Anyway, just because something is difficult doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile pursuit. I believe the majority could do it if they chose to do so. Are you arguing the opposite? Okey dokey. Solar is free and unlimited though, and plants have the amazing ability to turn solar energy into yumyums for people to eat. Maybe it'd be better if we just let the plants do their thing without spraying them with icky chemicals and fertilizers that create giant hypoxic zones in the gulf. Yep, people can think for themselves. They can choose to learn to grow food or study economics or design video games or whatever they want. We are in agreement here. Another economic thingy I know is that the less prevalent a skill set is, the more valuable that skill is (unless you're in a system that's all screwed up by crazy subsidies and are dependent on a finite resource to practice your skill set). So if something big does happen, maybe people who know how to grow food will become "valuable" to a sufficient degree in the eyes of others. Your idea of society's focus with respect to education is the same as my own. I don't know, they may or may not be the hippie scum you referenced in your earlier posts in this thread. Anyway, my point was that people in developed countries are having less children period, regardless of occupation. Furthermore, a lot of these hippies that are so into urban farming and eat local movements and alternative agriculture and all that aren't having many (or any) children on purpose. That's what I meant.

No joke. Thanks for the backup. I was wondering when the cavalry was going to arrive...

I do not call for an immediate stop to conventional methods. But gradually, food grown by alternative means can supplement more and more of what people eat, until such means will cease to be thought of as alternative. I will put my garden in my backyard, most likely. Where others grow their food is up to them. But I think I may have read about people growing food in formerly empty plots within cities themselves, or on rooftops, or in rural areas that surround cities. Again, despite the burn wounds, people are quite resourceful. Don`t you think so?

Not everyone has to be happy with how development goes for there to be land use regulations. It doesn`t have to be all (everyone is totally satisfied and there are no conflicts of interest) or nothing (as it is now). Besides, if Klineberg knows how to ask a question, why is his survey intentionally vague? (Gasp!) Is he...not asking good questions on purpose, to...to put a political spin on popular opinion? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

"for chrematistics, circulation is the source of riches . . . And it appears to revolve around money, for money is the beginning and the end of this kind of exchange. Therefore also riches, such as chrematistics strives for, are unlimited. Just as every art which is not means to an end, but an end in itself, has no limits to its aims, because it seeks constantly to approach nearer and nearer to that end, while those arts which pursue means to an end are not boundless, since the goal itself imposes a limit on them, so with chrematistics there are no bounds to its aims, these aims being absolute wealth. Economics, unlike chrematistics, has a limit . . . for the object of the former is something different from money, [the object of the latter] is the augmentation of money . . . By confusing these two forms, which overlap each other, some people have been led to look upon the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum as the final goal of economics." http://homepages.uel.ac.uk/M.DeAngelis/213ln2.htm "The concept of sustainability is far broader than conventional economic theory. Daly and Cobb refer to conventional economics as "chrematistics" -- the "manipulation of property and wealth so as to maximize short-term monetary exchange value to the owner". Sustainability is also broader than current ecological or social theory -- it includes "chrematistics". But sustainability is quite consistent with the root-word for economics, "oikonomia" -- "management of the household (community, society, humanity & biosphere) so as to increase its value to all members over the long run" (p. 138). Daly and Cobb propose an "economics of community", which they would achieve through changes in government policies. The proposal put forth in this paper, instead, is to develop a new theory -- sufficiently broad to encompass "oikonomia", for the purpose of guiding sustainable, long run human progress. New policies could then be built upon this new theoretical foundation." --from the preface to Toward an Economics of Sustainability by John E. Ikerd, University of Missouri, 1997 http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/econ-sus.htm Especially the latter example I`ve cited reiterates my understanding of the two terms, the contrast of which I first encountered in Paul Hawken`s The Ecology of Commerce. This is interesting. Thank you for exposing me to this concept. "Under certain idealized conditions, it can be shown that a system of free markets will lead to a Pareto efficient outcome. This is called the first welfare theorem. It was first demonstrated mathematically by economists Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu. However, the result does not rigorously establish welfare results for real economies because of the restrictive assumptions necessary for the proof (markets exist for all possible goods, all markets are in full equilibrium, markets are perfectly competitive, transaction costs are negligible, and there must be no externalities)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency The restrictive assumptions bear in mind the flattening of the world (globalization and its effects) and the need to eliminate externalities. I like this very much. You are most likely correct in stating that this is my goal, but I will go ahead and claim that Pareto Efficiency could be a feature of oikonomia. I hope that doesn`t bother you too much. Yes, but last time I checked, people still grew gardens and ate produce, so what`s your point? Good. I hope so. I`d rather we have a backup system in place just in case this doesn`t happen, though. So we can hope. I would like to believe this. I am not opposed to conventional agriculture per se, just its negative effects and costs. This is what I have been talking about. I doubt the environment is concerned with things like labor and capital per unit of output. You might want to rephrase that part. No one needs to "have consumers grow much of their own food", but if more and more consumers wish to do so, in their own leisure time, there`s nothing wrong with it. And what opportunity cost do you speak of, the cost to those individuals, or to others who would prefer they spend their leisure time in pursuits that require more consumption? (Please see this if you`re concerned with specialization. I find it interesting that you and this person would both hit upon this same concept. Perhaps you are willing only to spare a minute to read this, so I`ll be very specific: here`s the page http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/magazine...nted=2&_r=1 and it`s from the the third paragraph down. Maybe you can find more than a minute to read the whole article. That might be nice.) To attain urban farming on any large scale would necessitate that many people be interested in it. You seem to believe that people are incapable of learning more than one specialty. Why? Large scale urban farming does not require a population to become farmers in any professional sense. Practiced as a hobby or civic pursuit by the majority of those engaged, and given that enough people are interested in it, this type of production is completely feasible, though perhaps not at the same levels of output or yield per acre we see from mechanized, petroleum-intensive agriculture. And this would be totally fine, since this practice would exist as hobby and civic pursuit, working towards supplementing the food supply and facilitating the development of new agricultural techniques, like R and D you can eat. In this way, the problem expressed by your last sentence wouldn`t necessarily occur. Do you think those hippies growing carrots around Haight Ashbury are having lots of kids? I doubt it.

If labeling those foods facilitates recognition of any connection between them and disease, it can be protective, yes. Label the food and that will create a paper trail should one become necessary. It is fully within the realm of possibility to change this. We may not be as bright as we think we are, but we're a lot more flexible and resourceful than we give ourselves credit for, even with our multiple burn wounds from hot stoves. The more people are able to grow their own food or obtain it from local sources, the less necessary large scale monoculture becomes.

It was a pretty nice system, but does anybody know why it's so dark in there? Are they saving power or trying to keep people calm or what? Maybe, but I really liked how they had SpaceShipOne hanging right next to the Spirit of St. Louis. I just thought that was interesting to have two such groundbreaking crafts so close to each other that way.

I do like rainforest. Large-scale monoculture is not truly cost-effective. There are externalities that are not considered. This is what I meant by chrematistics as opposed to oikonomia. You assume millions of additional acres would have to be planted, but this is not necessarily true. A recent article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times mentioned that as much as 40% of the produce Americans ate during WWII was grown in victory gardens. Also, over the long term, it may become less necessary to sustain a population as large as the current one. What I mean is that if globalization is successful in lifting more and more people in developing countries out of poverty, the birth rates in these places could go down (as we've seen in nearly all developed economies). Or, pollution could get worse and eventually cause human sterility, and that would cause a decline in population as well. (The Children of Man scenario, you could call it). In any case, the thing about applause is that it fades soon after the performance is finished. These higher yields are produced with heavy use of fossil fuels, which are finite. It is better that we relearn methods of purely solar farming now while we have the luxury of time and remaining fuels. Also, these yields are produced in monocultures that degrade soil over time and require more and more fertilizers (and thus more petroleum). I know it's cliche, but it's simply not sustainable and it's bad economics.

I regret ever typing the phrase "semantic games". I'm not willing to quibble about whether or not human capabilities are unnatural. (Really? Nukes are natural? Really?) Yes, we are animals: very smart animals that can create very nasty things that wouldn't occur naturally. Anyway, whether or not one believes that GM foods are "unnatural", it is still necessary for them at least to be identified. If my use of the word "unnatural" is disagreeable to you, I can easily replace it with "potentially harmful" or "unprecedented" or something else. Even if you want to call the gene gun treatment "natural", you must at least concede that this is not something that (other) animals and plants can do by themselves, without high levels of technology. That fact alone accounts for my position that we must at least label these foods, lest there be side effects from their consumption.

Thanks! I'm glad I could get that shot with the Christmas tree, especially considering that the other side of the Capitol is really yucky looking right now with construction. I hate to say it but I was disappointed. I really thought it was going to be much better. Granted I know very, very little about Native American culture, but I just thought it could have been more comprehensive. That building is beautiful but I feel like they wasted a lot of space with the atrium. There were some cool things like the Washington and Native Americans statue, and some beautiful Native artwork, but overall I'd give the museum a C at best. That's when I was there! Yeah, I was bummed about that, too. My mom said that museum was her favorite in D.C. But I was lucky to see a few pieces of Americana that they had on display at the Air and Space museum. These items included Lincoln's stovepipe hat, Washington's military uniform (he was a tall dude) and perhaps most significantly, the Puffy Shirt from Seinfeld. "I'm not a pirate!"

Perhaps in some places where you've lived the next generation isn't interested in farming because it's become a lot more difficult to be a farmer. There are plenty of young people that are interested in farming. Until recently, many farmers were losing money producing more of a crop of which there was already a surplus. I can't say definitively whether the rise of Big Agra caused the decline in small family farms, but there sure as heck is a correlation there. And no, that doesn't mean causality, but it could. I suppose we should thank goodness for these wonderful companies that are willing to "invest in the automation" that is now necessary for us to produce food. This needs to change. It is possible for small-scale farming operations to proliferate again. No, I'm not. But again, that's just a tad different from injecting foreign DNA into cells and creating turnogs, etc. Until we know that there are no ill effects from eating food derived from such processes, it is my contention only that we label such food. Just so people can know what they're eating. The first part of your statement here makes no sense. Do you think it takes more or less energy to produce Twinkies than carrots? Again, even if Twinkies are "cheaper", they're not. Their production is most likely more costly to the environment than that of carrots, even if they can be stored for years. I'd rather have more nutritional food that goes bad more quickly than a sugar fatty chunk bar that lasts for years on a shelf. I'm not talking about the entire world and I'm not talking about all evil. I'm talking about misguided food policy in the United States. Our food policy is misguided because it facilitates the existence of an agricultural system which requires vast amounts of fossil fuels to produce food (that should be produced by free, unlimited solar energy) and which pollutes the environment and undermines those same natural systems upon which we ultimately depend for our food. To borrow a thought from Paul Hawken, our current agricultural system is operating under the rules of chrematistics and not oikonomia, which is sad because agriculture represents our most intimate cooperation with natural systems. http://www.ianr.unl.edu/ianr/csas/v6ch5.htm

Well, all right then.

I wasn't implying that man wasn't part of nature. But some of what man does is inherently unnatural, even if he is part of nature himself. This is the distinction between humans and animals. Man is a natural being who can do unnatural things, like creating solids that are lighter than air, or ram particles together and create miniature black holes, or create hydrogen bombs. Why did it suck? Because there were less of us? It tasted bad? Were you there? How do you know? Lots of people say that hunting/gathering societies actually had (for those that still exist, have) more leisure time than agriculturalists. Again, I'm not advocating a return to the system, but it seems many people are biased against it just because it's premodern and foreign to them. Perhaps it may seem that way, but it seemed like you were implying that man was solely responsible for the process of domestication. We can argue all day about this, but the fact remains that especially with animals, all the domesticated species we eat today more or less allowed themselves to be domesticated by man. Not consciously, of course, but in their natural demeanor and genetic profile. Case in point, humans have tried to domesticate oaks for eons. No luck. Jared Diamond argues that all of the domesticated animals we eat fit a certain profile. If just any species can be domesticated, why wasn't Europe conquered by Africans riding rhinos and eating giraffe meat? (I'm paraphrasing Diamond here). That's all I meant, anyway. Those factors led to the green revolution, yes. But I disagree that this had to lead to the preponderance of HFCS as a sweetener. That had mostly to do with clever food scientists and the corn surplus. The green revolution was a good thing. But it is unsustainable. Many of those fertilizers and pesticides are derived from a finite source: petroleum. We are in need of a second green revolution, one that can wean us off of mass monoculture and pollution and environmental degradation. It just seems difficult because it's not currently the norm. But it can be done. Especially if more people speak up and hold their government more accountable for bad policies and if those people speak to industry with what they buy or refuse to buy. There was a time when it wasn't necessary to fertilize soil in order to grow crops. There was a time when farms were really farms, hosting animals and plants that worked together to produce a variety of crops, the production of which enriched the environment and didn't degrade it. Now we have vast monocultures of corn and soybeans and seeds that won't germinate without brand name pesticides. It's time for another green revolution.

That's like what you said earlier. But do you think it's possible for people to actively contribute to this? Should there be a sort of website or grassroots campaign that targets products advertised on billboards and then directs boycotts of these very products or brands? How would it work? How do we make something (billboards) stop doing something (selling products)? (I'm not dubious of your ideas, but curious as to how you would implement them.)