Issues and Concerns Surrounding the Economics of Sewer Systems and Proposals for Zone 3 in Grand Bend Ontario

Hello Minister of the Environment, the Honourable John Gerretsen,

FYI, my contribution today to http://www.woohs.blogspot.com

This note sets down my present thoughts a few of the main issues and concerns that I have gathered from discussions, reading, and personal experiences related to the updating of sewer systems in Zone 3. I include a commentary where appropriate on the economics as I see it.

Many do not see the proposed system as an improvement over what is already in place. The existing individual units can easily be replaced at a lower cost if they mature or become defective. This process works best because it is easily performed and carries minimum risk to the environment and overall economics. It does not rely on centralised decision making other than a review periodically to ensure people are aware of the strength of their existing units. Weak units can be replaced and information shared as to the optimal methods for doing this both economically and environmentally. People are more willing to participate because they can see and understand the consequences. This process is sustainable as properties are bought and sold. New buyers can insist on quality units and sellers can insure units are inspected before properties are sold. Potentially everyone gains.

Other green steps could be attached to individual properties by implementing the European system of grading and surveying properties for energy efficiency and green technologies. A gradual greening of the community can be financed by Retirees and non-Retirees alike.

Retirees, in particular, simply cannot afford to waste money on a useless project with no net economic or green benefit for them.

This is a very serious concern for everyone at all levels. In the present economics, it is improper to take enormous risks with money even though interest rates are low. To gamble or plunge into a high risk project with dubious benefits and what is more alarming net costs or red ink and possible bankruptcy associated with it would be foolhardy to say the least. Yet, that indeed is what people feel very strongly is the case with the overall proposals.

At the very least, an insurance policy for those who might go bankrupt would be prudent. Many residents are retired and don't wish to gamble when interest rates are not giving a decent return and the stock markets are extraordinarily volatile. The uncertainties for savers continues into the long term so careful people will be reluctant to risk savings on something that has a rather checkered history.

The mix of retired and employed persons favours younger employed persons paying for improvements with a freeze on rates for Retirees and perhaps a reduction in overall services to make way for something that is rather marginal for them. Indeed, the economics is against Retirees having to contribute to a centralised type of upgrade as the horizon of benefits ultimately means they lose huge amounts of money at a time when savings are stretched.

The negative costs associated with something that does not bring about a benefit in economic or green terms suggests that the project should be stopped. It is a monumental waste of hard earned savings being spent at a time of severe economic stress.

There does not seem to be any economic justification for a new sewer system in zone 3 which has a very workable system already. In short it is a project that has not been properly assessed in economic and technical terms and local people quite rightly are strongly against it despite consultants reports that may support it's implementation.

Sincerely, RT Lake

Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine with your thoughts, today, and happiness grow in your heart! May you allow yourself some peace of mind.

The World of Matter

Horava's Theory of Matter, Einstein, the Fifth Force, Chameleon matter and the Physics of the Wuh Lax World

When you have a moment and time to puzzle over the idea that what appears around you is not what it appears at all, then consider where in the scheme of things does one's past go, and where can one find the future. In general and special relativity Einstein had an explanation that was puzzling because it implied that in some strange way the past, present, and future co-exist.

We don't seem to have a place to put all the matter if past matter and present matter and future matter all occupy space and time. Well, we have the puzzle of dark energy and that of dark matter. These imply that our methods of totalling up matter, the size and scales of the universe are in an early phase to say the least. However, if we assume that our present universe, which we can only guess at because we can never see it, is somehow wrapped up and the wrapping up involves energy and mass in some way, might not we expect that our measures of the present universe of matter be a tad understated. Well, I leave that with you because now we have a theory of Chameleon matter, a fifth force, to explain dark energy and dark matter.

See:

http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/mg20727711.100-is-a-cosmic-chameleon-driving-galaxies-apart.html

So what might this mean for the fact of light having no speed? If you are interested in the New Scientist articles on the nature of matter go to:

http://www.newscientist.com/mobile/article/mg20727721.200-rethinking-einstein-the-end-of-spacetime.html

For more general discussions, if you are interested in dark matter have a look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

Similarly, if you are interested in dark energy consult:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy

Also, see some of the controversies about dark energy and dark matter:

http://www.physorg.com/news77190620.html

What does Wuh Lax physics have to offer to this discussion? Stay tuned! At the very least, we can postulate that the bodies of past matter certainly do influence the bodies of present and further matters. And, the influence will depend on location? Think about that!

Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine with your thoughts, today, and happiness grow in your heart! May you allow yourself some peace of mind.

Development of Our World Economic Systems

The macroeconomic strategy for anything is almost invariably growth and development. It is a mantra of economists trained outside the school of history and environmental studies. It is the old way of thinking that brought us to our present state of unreadiness. For indeed, we are NOT ready for what is coming next.

They say that a rise in per capita real income results in the reduction in family size. A wonderful TED presentation ( see http://www.Ted.com ) by Hans Rosling describes in a powerful power point format how the distribution of wealth may materialize over future years as the slow growth richer economies give way to the fast growth poorer economies. What happens is that as we grow economies with higher per capita real incomes, we slow down world population growth rates and the earth's chances of survival improve.

The landscape of technology at the present time is poised for transformation from a long period of development into a rush of innovation. Growth in wealth terms worldwide could be spectacular. There are a few downsides to this, but the most interesting aspect is that we could save fragile systems that enrich our habitat while we grow richer, or we could create a boring plane of junk that leads everyone to higher and higher planes of frustration and boredom.

This issue is whether we go for stimulation or relaxation as our mode of living. We have a choice overall as to which direction the curve is biased.

We can go on as mainly permanent ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder, people, or as REAL, Relaxed Easy Artistic Living people. In the ADD world, people are seriously replaced and removed as so much machinery, but in the REAL world people continue as people, but they focus on the arts and the quality of life.

Most macro economic experts see development as desirable because they envisage a slow down in overall economic or macro growth as a consequence of underdevelopment. In reality, however, we have seen that the rapid development of financial markets in the wrong directions has been destructive of overall growth. Thus it matters what the direction of development has been.

We see that the development of the automobile and the combustion engine has brought with it the development of oil wells, refineries and a host of industrial artifacts and products from plastics to synthetic materials. It also has brought with it a host of issues associated with killing and death, wars, pain, and suffering on scales never before experienced. Most of all, it has shielded one part of the world from the problems of the other, so that a few countries did very well Jack, while many countries suffered terribly. This has happened within a century.

Perhaps, the development of the combustion engine was a bit lopped sided in the favor of interests that controlled oil production, refining, and distribution. We see that now! Some see it very clearly and we call them terrorists. As China uses more oil, it will increasingly fight these terrorists for the rest of the world until they are eliminated. The truth is, however, that technological innovation gets lopsided because free market economies are lazy in the innovation of alternatives.

Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine with your thoughts, today, and happiness grow in your heart! May you allow yourself some peace of mind.

Socks and stuff

My advice is to relax with a good book and put on your Marks and
Sparks socks with the pink toes!

RT

Concerns About Proposed Sewer System for Grand Bend and Zone 3 in Particular

Dear Minister of the Environment, Honorable John

I am a retired Civil Servant who has worked at the Federal and International levels dealing with a budget much larger than you could dream of.

This email is to tell you openly of my concerns about the proposed introduction of a new sewer drainage or pump system within the Zone 3 catchment locate at Southcott Pines in Grand Bend.

I realize that your office is keen to get the message across that you will protect the environment with resources that have been assigned jointly by Federal, Provincial and Municipal authorities.

The efforts of all three representative bodies will work in that direction only if they are properly coordinated with another representative body which is the consumer, and in this case the voter, who should have a significant say in what is done.

What I have seen is very destructive of the process of getting people to work towards a responsible solutions to very serious environmental issues. The end users, the people, the voters, are asking that you follow not only the law, but the best courses of action to get the job done in ways that the progress made is sustainable. What is currently in the pipeline for my locality will ultimately be unsustainable and have to be reversed by a wiser more coordinated and responsive collection of individuals. That is my concern. I do not wish to see projects that will be torn up and thrown away within a short space of time, especially as resources to protect the environment are extraordinarily scarce.

Realistically, to accomplish a sustainable system for removing human waste, you need to talk to the people who produce it. There is no other way to have them on board. The idea that you can mandate a solution by labeling it the best is a false and dangerous path to take as it precludes the many difficult steps that are needed to produce a sustainable solution, one that will last, do the job, and be supported financially by all levels of participate over the long haul.

I think the steps to introduce the proposed sewer systems for this area are greatly misguided, misfitting to the job, and unsustainable at almost every level of participation. This is why you will hear so many frustrated people taking on positions as equally misfitting to the task. In short, you, the Federal Government, the Regional people, and the local people have not yet finished your homework. It is not good enough to say that you are eager to go ahead and have the money, when their is no brains behind the application of the technologies proposed and they do not fit the task, are ill suited to the job, do not engender support from the end user and will damage relations at all levels of participation.

So, please, I know you want to look good on this and I know you want to do a good job, and I know you are keen that the environment be protected, but THINK more about the process, get all the soldiers in a row, get technologies that are fitting to the task and then go about getting support in the proper way with everyone on board because that is what it takes for a sustainable solution.

Personally, I don't know you, but what I have seen thus far suggests that the people with the money are not doing their proper job of seeing the i's dotted and the t's crossed and there may be some strange illegalities going on. We don't know. I don't know, but the present process of proposal, selection, review, consultation, and implementation is not good. It smells more than the pollution we are seeking to avoid.

You are the man! You need to get your head around this or you will cross a threshold of discontent and wasted time that nothing you propose in the future will be sustainable. Get your act together and participate appropriately as you should. Get better people on the job. Get them to focus more on the tasks that will get us a sustainable effort of which we can all be proud. That you have gone down the wrong tracks so far is no shame. Everyone makes mistakes, but don't continue in the misfitting directions you are heading with this.

Arthur Lake,

Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine on your thoughts, today!

Residents want to charge city for their shit

In this imaginary environmentally friendly community, the residents put in a claim for their recycled excrement. They say the nutrients provided to the city are not so different from cow and pig manure which save farmers millions in costs for imported fertilizer.

When interviewed, the citizens claim that cities are secretly stealing their shit and companies and farm corporations they sell it to are dumping it on fields to grow energy crops such as corn.

Given the high cost of energy, one's shit can fetch a high price if properly accounted for and treated as a recyclable for energy production.

Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine on your thoughts, today!

Environment Ministries of Ontario and Canada Want to Shit All Over Rare Carolingian Forest

I won't mention the communities involved, but this story is unusual in that it defies what common sense environment ministries are supposed to exercise when spending tax money. It's a story of a beautiful Canadian community and rare Ontario Carolingian forest area that is being used as a sewer for human waste. It's a story about what can go wrong when bureaucrats in far off places don't have enough control over where and how precious tax savings are spent.

It's a story of loss of control when power is in the hands of people with the purse rather than devolved to the local community, and how it can devastate small communities financially, while looking good in the books of agglomerated communities defined by the economies of scale. It's a story about why large and efficient is not best.

It's an example for every concerned world community wishing to avoid the environmental degradation brought on by large scale thinking and projects. It's a story of the extraordinary mismatch between short term thinking and long term financial reality. It's a story about extraordinary waste of precious savings that should go to protect the environment redirected towards projects that destroy the environment.

Stay tuned for reevaluations and details you will not believe about how people feel comfortable when used as a flow point for human excrement! Be concerned because this could be your community in Ontario, Canada that is be used as a dump for human shit in a large scale so-called environmental project.

Posted on google.com by AW Lake.

Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine on your thoughts, today!

Thank you for Stopping by!

Hi Wally!

My wife and I appreciate all the work you have been doing for your neighbours. We will try to wag our tongues a bit to help out where possible.

My mantra is that we here should maintain the lowest energy use and lowest net pollution sewer system out of our present residential areas. The existing system is best for minimizing energy use and pollution in a residential low environmental impact community. Our woods, wetlands and ponds provide a modern optimal long term solution. We provide access to nature and share our property with nature in a balanced environmentally friendly way.

This may mean a permanent delay to the authorities proposal for an energy using sewer system here as it's energy and pollution costs are much too high under present world and national targets to cut pollution creation and total energy use.

We will give moral support to farmers efforts to cut energy costs and net pollution out of the farms.

Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine on your thoughts, today!

Understanding the American Financial Industry Mindset ... summary comment.

Despite all that's happened in the financial world over the last several years, the mindset of the firms and banks making up the industry may not have changed appreciably. This means that the people worldwide will have to adjust to a permanent phenomenon of game playing. The mindset is focused on me, or I, or the self as a financial enterprise playing a game within what is considered a willing group. That group is the worldwide population.

The group set is that everyone wins because there is a payout and the losers are not willing to end the games. Payouts give advantages to winners that puts losers into the background of the rule changing of the games played. Losers don't end the game playing, but they do drop out of games. Players may even get caught cheating or put the playing field at risk. Nevertheless, the games continue and the losers pay handsomely whether they like it or not.

The sad thing about the games is that they change income and wealth distribution increasingly towards biological responses that increase the actual numbers of losers. This too favors those changing game rules and means larger payouts and easier pickings over lots and lots of games and over shorter and shorter financial industry product cycles.

Rather than having a world view of people as people, the financial game players, and especially those living in America, don't see the results of their game playing. They see no morality codes that need to be adhered to other than cheating at the games and changing e rules of the games in their favor. Their existence is focused on winning more and more games with bigger and bigger payouts. They care nothing, nothing, about the progress of other players other than that they are competing with them for larger and larger payouts.

Most other people see people as people and not as not financial "John's" to be screwed. Most people live in an interactive world of human beings and have normal emotional responses, but the game players have lost that sensitivity. For them, any game goes as long as the payout is better. That is their mindset and it is what and who they are. They can even be machines. Yes, the new game players can behave like machines or they can actually be the machines themselves. Game players can control machines that play the games for them, or play some of the games for them. Machines can control machines to play games.

So the financing world has changed, or seemingly so. There is less morality in the finical world because the machine has already taken over and its goal is larger and larger payouts to game players, human and machine compositions, that play more and more games with larger and larger payouts from winning.

Yes, as a human being, you have already lost to the machine, an amoral machine at that, who is controlling your time and money-making activities more and more. There are no rules in games played by the machine game player that cannot be re-written in it's favor.

My friend, the battle against an amoral machine has already been lost.

Will ye no think kindly on those who would be your friends! May the sun shine on your thoughts, today!

Check out The Adventures of the Little Woman and lose your money to a con artist.

Check out this application on the App Store if you think you are non vulnerable to cons!

The Adventures of the Little Woman Anton Sinelnikov Category: Lifestyle Updated: 25 Jun 2010

iTunes for Mac and Windows

Please note that you have not been added to any email lists. Copyright © 2010 iTunes S.à r.l. All rights reserved

Sent from my iPad with a grain of salt and a peppering of truth.  

Visit http://woohs.blogspot.com

No 'preordained path' for interest rate increases or do you like to gamble your savings away?

Canadian interest rate policy is changing!  The UK also has a split in it's voting.  When the crack appears deminishing returns for fighting inflation already built into peoples debt burden will accelerate extremely rapidly.  The idea of avoiding a second dip is pretty silly in face of the existing debt overhang and war economics.

Do you believe the conventional wisdom?

No 'preordained path' for interest rate increases

Sent from my iPad with a grain of salt and a peppering of truth.  

Visit http://woohs.blogspot.com

The problems continue from borrowing short and lending long. What Is inflation?

Just thinking about the debt overhang should send shivers through your spine. We all have read about how the reparations exacted from Germany by France led to militarisation and the holocaust. Don't be fooled that it can't happen again. The governments of the war economies of Britain, Canada, and United States continue to support debt growth well into the future.

In contrast, we know that people should not be drawn into gambling their future away on the stock markets of hell economies. We know people shoukd earn a decent real interest rate from their savings so that they can plan for future retirements and safe pensions free of inflation.

The disguised inflation of property asset inflation fools everyone into thinking we have low inflation, but our realities are very different. The watchdogs of the UN organizations have failed us while the US, Canada, and Britain were nation building in the Middle East under the guise of protecting Jewish interests for stability in the Middle East.

The war on terror is now about to become a war on debt. The price of waging war on terrorism is too expensive to think the world won't be drawn into much worse. Terrorists can't possibly help the interests of terrorists because the footing of their cause is undermined by the interconnectedness of humanity. We all go down as one as long as the wars continue. No one wins, everyone loses in wars.

What we have is war and the consequences of wars:

- disguised inflation in the form of property appreciation that cannot be sustained,

- people with debt so high they are owned by lenders in a new form of interest paying debt slavery,

- a resurgence of neo-nazist thinking and grouping,

- the US National Rifleman's Association saying they are bored having won the crazy policy of arming everyone to the hilt with weaponry that is caustic to think about,

- a dissipation of tolerance and trust, interest rates so low that it is impossible to save in a bank deposit without losing real assets because inflation has been enormously higher in return, especially in wasteful speculation in property,

- the return of the fallacy of the notion that inflation could be good to wipe out debt,

- Isreal now increasingly hated by moderates because of Isreal's own forms of extremism,

- the real possibility of a renewal of hostilities in Northern Ireland,

- the destruction of the environment of the Caribbean,

- the loss of initiative to fight a dying planet overheating with too many engines of economic growth firing on all pistons to out compete each other.

There is an strangeness of our world as it's future has streams of hate and love in conflict. The majority want poverty to end but it is growing and people are suffering from the excesses of the rich and powerful.

Quite a turn for the books!

We have a respite from the swine and bird flu only to find there are other more serious threats to manage.

Review the mismatch once again:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=borrow%20short%20lend%20long%20inflation&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Sent from my iPad with a grain of salt and a peppering of truth.

When stealing is OK!

Stealing is rampant and you need to know all the games people use to steal from you. The poor do become poorer through thievery. Theft is the game of the rich and powerful. It has become the game of the ordinary church going, mosque attending, average hypocrite that one wants to trust, yet it is naive in this modern age if one blindly does trust others. There are too many thieves around to be safe, too many pick pockets after your hard earned assets, so be wary.

When and if one treads through history, one finds that most of the financial and economic misery of the post war period arises from excesses associated with the misuse of the US dollar and the lack of sincerity in financial reforms through time that sought to make a more honest or fair world. Sure the IMF has come up with ways to mitigate excesses, but historically the pain that is felt by the small scale operator and by ordinary families, the weak, vulnerable and poor, is disproportionately high. You will experience loss yourself through theft.

Poor people bear too much of the brunt of the results of excess and abuse by large concerns, particularly banks that claim the moral high ground yet fleece the poor. The latest financial reforms in the US are a cop out to the larger issues of legalised theft, and a way to expand thievery. Read the following article on Volker's approach and see if you don't agree with me!

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/07/26/100726fa_fact_cassidy?currentPage=all

My concern is that we put people through unnecessary misery because we neglect to curtail the financial excesses of those with capital. We assume a general morality in finance that does not exist in reality. We turn a blind eye to what is essentially creative thievery. In our self created amoral society, people steal small things most of the time. Where people can keep secrets they do and they really exploit opportunities for legal theft whether they work in government or business. They do it with a warped sense of morality based on the notion that consequences are limited and it's smart to steal and deceive. The young being astute game players are increasingly adept at amoral theft. Steal a bit here, loot a bit there. It's part of the historical background.

Well then the next step is to steal by force when necessary. We are naive to think that this won't happen to our kids and to ourselves as we will experience the effect of laws that make it easier to steal and we become increasingly vulnerable to thieves. The legal systems and electronic technologies that make it easier to steal are with us and unfortunately expanding at an alarming rate.

Daily, we hear about Internet theft. Any casual conversation will lead to a discussion of who has lost what from a group on the Internet. Meet anyone and they will have experienced loss from theft.

Obviously, there is rampant thievery behind the scenes, and most worrying is when trusted people engage in it wholesale, the British MPs steal by false expenses, the villages wanting revenues do it legally by the science of the placement of speeding cameras, banks do it by the timing of the debit of interest, governments do it by keeping interest rates low so they can acquire more tax assets and finance takeovers of the private economy, firms do it by loans from banks to acquire competitors or plum operations others have spent their lives developing.

Theft has been legalised and you need to know the basic rule that it's very ok.

In fact, in the modern world if you don't steal, cheat, swindle, con, deceive, you are a mug of the highest order.

The game as it is now played has no rules except those passed by the thieves to steal legally. You might as well pass laws so that you can steal, as well.

Sent from my iPad with a grain of salt and a peppering of truth.

David Cameron's Initiative to Slash Government Excesses

As an observer of what is happening as a consequence of the extraordinary excesses of the series of governments in Britain, Canada and the US, which have been on a war financial footing for almost a decade, the appearance of a Mr. Cameron budget slasher is welcome.

The greatest challenge to these three countries is the reduction of debt. Canada to be sure has had an Alberta oil cushion to lean on, but that era is closing rapidly as the costs of pollution mount up. So much pollution has built up during the last decade in Britain, USA, and Canada that the environments are scarcely recognisable, so much deterioration in the quality of the environment! Pollution in these three countries on ever increasing scales and explosion of debt are the consequence of nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan, an enormous cost of spend spend spend governments. Well, it seems trite to say that the bill has arrived and it is spectacularly large. Irresponsible is the word that describes the war spending mentality of Britain, Canada, and United States, placing the stability of the world at enormous risk!

There is so much debt around that one's head spins! David Cameron obviously a man of vision and David Clegg an astute opposition leader realise that the absolutely wasteful excesses of the Blair and Brown years have possibly destroyed the future of the country. So little is the domestic economy that one hardly thinks that Britain is a home for the British. Everyone in the middle ground of the economy is in debt up to the eyeballs, loans are too many multiples of income streams, or beholden to government handouts, or corrupted by property speculation and stock market gambling. Ownership has shifted by a stupendous amount to outside financiers who pillage the country looking for spoils like the Manchester United football team or Harrods. The real question is whether or not it is too late and whether or not the leadership of Cameron and Clegg is sufficient.

Opposition to the cost cutting in Britain comes from those who will benefit most in the long term, the ordinary people who have been led down the Gordon path of waste for over a decade. They are so addicted to waste that frugality is going to appear as extreme withdrawal and headaches will be a daily event.

Here is a review from a New York paper.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/world/europe/21cameron.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Sent from my iPad with a grain of salt but a peppering of truth.

William Li's idea that we can potentially eat to starve cancer? Below is a link to his Video on TED.com

Hi! Occasionally, you are in my thoughts and that is why you are receiving this email.

Thought you might find this interesting if you had not already come across it.

We are what we eat. Such is the logic of a novel idea, which seems to be not so novel and yet is revolutionary in concept. It has to do with blood vessels and how our body produces and destroys them. William Li presents the idea on TED that we potential have the means to avoid many diseases and fight disease issues within our bodies by understanding more about how the body heals itself naturally. When our bodies are in balance they cope with the many potential disease issues we see rampant in the total population. Surprise, surprise, our health depends enormously on our diet and exercise!

The kicker is that most diets require an overall balance to be effective but don't deal effectively with overall balance. Most diets are partial rather than general equilibrium in nature. Thus, one goes on a popular diet loses weight temporarily and regains the weight subsequently. Or, one has a diet to fight something and dies from that that something anyways. This is particularly the problem of diets designed to fight cancer.

We know cancer is potentially going to kill any one of us. What we don't often realize is that the health issues that lead to cancer have long tails, such as breathing in a small particle of asbestos that thirty years later has cancer cells growing around it that lead to the full blown disease. Our bodies, nevertheless, can cope with a host of potential cancers by being in equilibrium with regard to blood vessel creation and destruction. This is what Dr Li focuses on! How do we ensure that our bodies cope with most destructive factors that would lead to premature death or a health disequilibrium such as characteristic of obesity? Many diseases have very long tails and so we can be surprised by unexpected disease more often as we grow older.

Our bodies are extraordinarily complex and there are no easy answers. Dr Li does however present an enormous set of possibilities for reducing the likelihood of any one of an enormous set of diseases appearing out of nowhere. The method hinges on the bodies ability to create and destroy blood vessels. We may find that we can proactively increase the chances that our bodies will be in equilibrium as regards having the natural weaponry and supplies of what is needed from the chemistry of our food to fight an enormous list of potential diseases. And, win!

The corollary is that we animals have evolved in equilibrium but that balance is destroyed by what we are attracted to by those selling food. Rather that being hunters and gatherers, we have become cavities in which an enormous list of toxins are dumped daily. We are lulled into putting the toxins into our bodies because we do not proactively try to determine what is good for us and verify the actual effects of what we encouraged to put onto or into our bodies. We have become lazy in our surveillance of potential hazards, such as sugar, wheat, salt, omega 6 fat, nicotine, food colorings, proteins, and so on.

Review Dr Li's talk and let us know what you really think?

http://www.ted.com/talks/william_li.html

Sent from AW Lake

Pessimism built into technology

Hi Readers!

Thank you for your replies.  You are absolutely right in all you write even though you do it off the cuff.  

The old issues of letting things be governed by the price mechanism produce my skepticism about recycling, which is that it will worsen the environment because of economic forces.  I just use the examples to start thoughts without firing any real argumental guns.  

The difficulty is not from the intent of policy makers which is to protect the environment, but rather that we are designed by the logic of efficiency and competition to bring the technology bull into the china world we occupy.  Technology drives economics through economies that produce the effect of profit.  Because people will choose inappropriate technologies for the environment being profit oriented, there is no hope for the environment.  The point is that the technologies we have innovated are diametrically in opposition to protecting the environment.  This means that as we use the business approach to social exchange, we will surely kill the golden goose just as certainly as if we were to release a bull into a china shop and it would break the china.  Politics must rule the economic choices, but politics is not smooth and can lead to it's own destructive goals.

Recycling is a silly construct to make people feel good!

The fact is that we are on an economic technology path to kill all that is beautiful in the world because we worship economies of scale as these provide the greatest profit.  All social arrangements of exchange based on the profit motive are designed technologically to destroy the environment.  Bigger is destructive of family and healthy social arrangements, and yet it is what gives us a rising standard of living and makes our destructive system work in the short term.  It leads however to higher and higher environment costs that are not priced by present market mechanisms.  

My assessment is very Hawking that the generating functions of our physics and the biology of our nature and tools produces a bad series of physical events.  We need to find a better series that will create the world habitat structure which is optimal.  Our economies of scale dilemma lurks in the background to destroy all our efforts.  The BPs of this world are driving it to destruction.  

The banking orientation of the IMF is driving the world to destruction.  There is so much destructive power in the money and debt out there that we will be lucky to avoid a major third war.

 

Can you see a way out?

 

Sent from my iPad

The Recycling of the obvious and why economies of scale fail in the new economic reality

How strange it is that where a resource is most plentiful, it may be the resource that is most likely to be recycled. The logic would seem to be that if local production facilities exist that can use a resource it will be recycled because there is a demand from the producing end of the production cycle. However, what is strange is that the recycled resource is at these points relatively more plentiful, thus one is seeing coal shipped, as it were, to Newcastle which already has coal coming out of it's ears!

What's missing from this logic is the relocation of the resource to be recycled in sufficient quantity to be useful in a productive process where it is most needed. Thus, if a recyclable is shipped back to where it is plentiful the intuitive shipment cost is doubled. Were the availability of a recyclable in a new location to lead to a productive process then the reshipment back would be unnecessary to the use of a resource.

A good example of what I mean is the refusal in parts of Devon to collect paper, while there is an enthusiasm to collect farm waste. The reality is that of introducing new industry to recycle farm waste which is plentiful, not back into the farm, but into producing electricity. The danger is that economies of scale in the electricity sector will destroy the agricultural sector as profits from energy production outstrip those of farming by a huge factor. End result is a negative when a positive environmental impact was intended. It's how profitability in production can distort the economics of the environment. Additionally, the negative externalities of production are not costed. Pollution is after all a free good and rarely accounted for. One can accumulate as much pollution as one's domicile and activities allow. People will even pay one to absorb their pollution but rarely enough to cover the costs of being polluted! We can see that recycling is not the process introduced but further pollution based on neglect of the true economic, environment and social cost. All is done because a profit can be obtained. Money making rules rather than judgement and good sense.

So what happens to paper where there is a paper shortage. There the paper is burned because there is no production facility that can use it! Paper is recycled in Canada and burned in Britain! Not wholly true but real enough that we can see that the problem is production for profit as distorted by economies of scale that arise when something is plentiful. It's technology use that is at fault. Technology is used to make profit and not a better local environment. Why should we lie about this reality rather than tackling it's true costs of pollution and unemployment?

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Article: Friendship in an Age of Economics

Occasionally, one finds on the Internet articles that are very close to unearthing little truths that we understand, but have difficulty expressing ourselves.  The following link finds you a page or more of interesting discussion on the nature of friendship as it stands outside normal economic considerations.

Friendship in an Age of Economics
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/friendship-in-an-age-of-economics/

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The anosognosic's dilemma

Readers

Thank you for sharing with me your personal connections to an anosognosic's dilemma. We share the dilemma. None of us really escape the dilemma?

We all like to feel we are in control and fully aware of what's sending messages inside us and around us. Fact is we have only a varying percentage of awareness and spend most of our waking hours guessing what the messages are. We can firmly say that we occupy two worlds, that inside our heads and that outside, at the very least. There is much more going on, however!

I think we are attached to billions of quantum worlds through our brains and the billions of bugs and plants that make us what we are, a massive world of living organisms, many of which continue to live on after we lose our own memories and self reflections, those amazing abilities to conjure up a multidimensional abstractions from thousands of living organisms sending messages to each other.

In brief, if you don't think we send messages to the quantum worlds you are flying in the face of mounting evidence, and we are discovering how organisms can and do exchange both to and have components that receive messages from quantum worlds. They say plants could not exist if they did not occupy our universe and the quantum ones. We are so much more than plants and we do have billions of plants living within us making us what we are and can be, consciously or otherwise!

RT

One person aware of the problem wrote!

> My mother was an anosognosic after a massive stroke resulting in a non-functioning the right hemisphere confirmed by Pet scans. She definitely did not know what she did not know. It was impossible for me to imagine what she experienced. So I did not know what she knew and could not know what she

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