Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Knew that bloody spaceship was lurking around here somewhere LOL

Mods... it is your duty to inform us all of things that lurk in the shadows...

to forewarn us.... and gives us all an equal chance to buy a ticket out of here

What the heck I'll stay and face the judgement, guilty of deitie bullock nibbling or not. Might be good to get them believers off my friggin planet!

Where is LKB when you need him?

Time for some pruning. :chainsaw:

Stu--You may laugh, but the dik hed across the road from me, had a
traxcavator knocking trees over again the blocks here are 3.4h(8 1/2 ac 34ooosq mtrs and is single residential/special rural). Huge Redgum, Jarrah, blackbutt plus the undergrowth, native orchids,etc this has been going on for 15 years. no f*potty mouth*g idea or respect. Shire has no teeth, C.A.L.M. can only light matches, a huge wedge of soil has been cut out of the side of the hill.
So what do I do, go plant some more trees where there are none.

wonder why ppl come to the wilderness and chop down all the trees...
One of the 5 most species diverse regions in the world...
SW Western Australia when you do a dpi aerial photo the scar is more visible than the golf course nearby.
Just hope he *potty mouths* off soon by selling it.
sorry for dribbling in my beer
just hate it when the ground moves and its not me! hope he gets invaded by a brain one day soon.
C1

The Widget Makers

One day thousands of years ago, some individual found that he had nothing to do with his time since there was enough crop yield from the horticultural activities of the clan that he thought of making a better widget. This new widget served the clan well and was accepted as a permanent fixture. This individual now had a purpose within the clan, and in life....to make and maintain these widgets.

Over time, he passed this skill on to his grandchildren, who passed it along to thiers and for six generations, his family became known as the widget makers for all the clans in the region. After six generations however, another individual came along and made a better widget resulting in greater crop yield. And now the great grandchildren of the first widget maker found themselves displaced because they no longer knew how to farm as a life skill and had grown utterly dependent upon thier own widget making AND the skills of the farmer. Additionally, with the farmer now producing greater yield because of this new widget, more people, including the great grandchildren found themselves displaced and struggled for new ideas and widgets from which to earn a living. More and more, people grew more dependent upon the farmer, and more in competition with themselves for new ideas and widgets from which to make a living. As it became harder, people became more desperate, stress began to emerge within the clans and people started infighting over resources and ideas, and pretty soon there were fewer and fewer ideas or inventions or ways to make a living within the region, and the original widget family could not compete.

So these grandchildren of the original great widgetmaker family decided to sell thier property and use the money to lend to others like themselves who were in a pinch and needed to come up with a new and better widgets or ways in which to make a living. This loan of course came at a price, and so the Widget Family became debtors and bankers. They were back in business, and the loan industry seemed endless as the population grew more and more and people needed loans. Of course there were risks and failures, but the projected loss was anticipated and built into the profit margin. And of course there was ALWAYS debtors prison. The Widget Family became rich and powerful beyond anyone's wildest imagination, and eventually they grew to royalty and merged with the church in an attempt to control all the people and discontent and sickness among the communities. Oh...and then the Widget Family sent thier people locked up in debtors prison to a continent in the southern hemisphere.....The rest, as they say, is history....

We have emerged and distanced ourselves from subsistence living for the pursuit of widgets and what the Widget Family has, and that has been our downfall. We now have time to pursue mindless hedonism and philosphize about how best to live. We now have a world that is sick with global economics and a world society that has evolved away from the basic principles of living and survival on the Earth, subsistence and no more.

In the time/space continuum, the emergence of economics and labor displacement is a very young cancerous cell that, with self realization and understanding can be surgcally removed to save the planet and ourselves. When we drifted "literally" from the garden, we f***d up. We abandoned subsistence living in pursuit of our own interests because widget making made us feel good and better than that boring old dirt farming, and certainly the great widget making family thought they would be prosperous forever, so why couldn't we. More widgets, better lifestyles, human expansion through technology and good economics....a terminal pursuit.

Is it possible to abandoned widgets and widget theory and live from the Earth?

Hey MF, have you read this one too? The downsides of civilization leaving hunting and gathering for farming, before changing from farmers to widget makers:

http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/ag ... stake.html

Very good article Dave... it is inexplicable to me that refuting the idea of modern civilization esentially being a mistake is interpreted to be an attack against our survival rather than enlghtenment of what we have learned from history and how to avoid self destruction. The Malthusian Catastrophe can only be solved by subsistence living....whether that be horticultural living (not agricultural) or hunter gathering.

My final answer;)

C1
I wouldn't laugh. If its as you describe I'd be doing what I could do stop or at least moderate such actions. One of the side lines I have is as a planning consultant. Most of my work in that field is a researcher and advocate working to either stop development of sensitive sites or getting the developers to see some sense.

If I've offended by my attempts at humour I'm sorry. The distressing thing is that this debate seems to be getting a bit personal (I may be wrong, it may be just because of this single channel communication medium). This is doubly distressing since I suspect that most of us have the same end point in mind, better conservation, use of resources, responsible stewardship etc. The thing is we get there from such completely different starting points. Can you imagine the disscussions that DB and I might have on faith even though in this debate we are relatively closely alligned?

Pardon my lack of knowledge , but which church do Corncuopians go to, and which one do the Malthusians attend ?
It all gets back to a belief system in the end, which is what we all have of one sort or another, except for those that believe in science....opps, did I say "believe" in science ?
Humans only have 3 possible things that motivate us, 1 to enjoy a benefit, 2 to escape a penalty/disadvantage, and, 3 love (the last one being most rare) Whatever you choose to analyse that drives people to do what they do can be distilled down to one or two of those three.

Muzza

no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others


Bet its snot

That the hunter gather lifestyle can be and often was healtheir than early or even modern agricultural lifestyles is something that won't get any argument from me. The quote I have from memory was that "early american indians were digustingly healthy". Don't know where that came from learned it years ago

However, that they were better off, I don't know about that. A hunter gather would have to have it pretty good to have it better than me. Mind you I'm one of the privileged western few.

While I'll except the general premise of the article you posted it has got a lot of emotive language in it that tends to discourage objective thought.

While hunter gatherers may have had a better diet there is a large body of evidence that there lives where far from ideal. The ideal of the noble savage I think origanated in victorian times along with a lot of other romantic ideals. Hunter gathers were still people though. In Australia there is a consdirable body of evidence that inter tribal warfare played a significant part in the lives of indigenous Australians. So they might have been eating better than farmers but they still found the time to kill each other.

One of the reason that the article states hunter gatherers were better off is because they controlled their population:



How is a society or lifestyle that practices infanticide a better one?



While this seems logical it isn't broadly supported by evidence. Some of the areas where agriculture is thought to have began are areas that hunter gathers can't survive in on a permanent basis namely mesopotamia. That hunter gathers considered the new technology (farming) as opposed to their old technology, I feel, isn't supported by the evidence. It may have happened in the case of aztecs of Dicksons Mounds as the article MF pointed us to suggests. However in europe (an area I'm more familar with) the evidence of the change from hunter gather to farmer is interpreted to have occured over many generations. Indicating a gradual take up of a new life style rather than a consious change of lifestyle.

My third beef with this srticle is


The sort of tree huggin commie that spouts this rehtoric fails to understand why such hirechy come into existence. First of all every group has leaders. If those leaders are bad then you have a bad leader who you may be entitled to call a parasite. However, if its a good leader then you have a protector of the people. The warrior class is just another of the forms of specialistion that in some societies evidence suggests occured before the agricultural revolution in that society.

Imagine two tribes living side by side. One is ruled by an evil canabalistic, rulthless warrior. If I lived in the other tribe I'd gladly give up a portion of my food and productivity to support my leader in his efforts to protect our tribe.

This is why when DB argues so strongly agaisnt government taxation he does advocate that the government should tax us to support a military. A ruling group of people is an essential part of society. Thankfully membership in that group is open to a large rather than small fraction of people in our society.

Yeah its pretty funny is it not.

So many times people say science has proven....... Few years later (sometimes lots of years) more research is done and us scientists say well you know how we said......

Hence my tag.

so Stu in your other role sorry sideline as 'planning consult' would you know how to enlighten this nieghbour of mine?
or is that out of your scope of works?
Do I do what he does when he is angry?
Do I just hold my breath and die?
Do I get a gun and shoot him?
This guy is not stable, he's accused me of all kinds of things, none true!
Even when he hit me in the head with a rock, he called the cops first.
He's been on a disability pension for more than 20 yrs bludging off you and me. Known in the district as a grower and more recently a lab boy for the CC.The cops don't want to know!
Give me a laugh Stu come on!!!
C1

Quite possible that the cops do know and are paid not to care

Sounds like he is a horrible neighbour to have to deal with. As to how I can help I don't know. I've never had anything to do with Western Australian planning legislation. If he is on a disability pension and he is doing some of the work on his land to develop it that could be a begining. If you could get evidence of this then present it to centrelink they would take the case from there. This a standard tatic when dealing with a developer that you suspect to be dodgy. If you can succesfully get them investigated and fined/ convicted of something it can affect their credibility when they have to defend their development application.

More than likely, seems everyone knows but no one cares.
cpt C1...
don't get me wrong ...do what you want but don't affect anyone in the process is the go!