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Wake up North America!.............
even flow - question mark
Posts: 1,568
The poison from the poison stream caught up to you ELEVEN years ago and you floated out of here. Sept. 14, 08
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even flow - question mark
Posts: 1,568
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this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
Man I miss this musician the most ...
astoria 06
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this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
Thanks for posting.
Maybe change the title though?
I hear this a bunch and it sticks in my craw. It's the sort of well-meaning pseudo-pop science that western culture lives on.
It's a damaging perspective in my opinion, because it focuses on the problems created that effect our current way of life rather than focusing on the problems our current way of life creates. It's exactly the same as pointing the finger at chemical fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide use, when the finger should be pointed at the industrial monocropping system that requires those inputs. It's that system of agriculture that also requires large colonies of non-native honeybees to be trucked and shipped back and forth around the world (spreading pathogens) to pollinate fruiting crops in humongous fields of pathological uniformity.
Small scale farming systems almost always incorporate tactics like companion planting, crop diversity, crop rotation, composting, incorporation of native pollinator attractors, and manual inputs (hand weeding, composting) which attract native pollinators (most of which aren't bees at all) and eliminate the need for fert, herb, and pest inputs.
If the honeybee population of the entire world collapses, humanity will go on for several reasons, the primary reason being that staple crops like corn, wheat, soy and rice are self-pollinating anyways! The secondary reason we won't all die is because there are still people like me who farm in the old ways, which don't require honeybee colonies at all.
All that being said, neonicitinoid pesticides need to go, and North America certainly needs to wake up on the issue.
The point I'm trying to make is that if we actually want to save our future on this planet we have to change in much more fundamental ways than which pesticides we ban or allow.
We have to so fundamentally change the way we approach food that I have no hope of it ever happening at all.
For example, an average person in Chicago in the winter shouldn't have access to probably 90% of their diet. Fresh produce, seafood, and at least half the meat eaten should be unavailable to any but the wealthiest. People who live in cities should either be wealthy enough to trade manufactured goods for unpreserved foods, or they should live on dried and canned staple diets that are unacceptable to our spoiled selves. That's the way humanity survived for all but the last 50-60 years and it's our only hope for surviving the next thousand.
These are inconvenient truths, but they are truth. Fresh food should be extremely expensive out of season, the cost should be paid by the consumer and not the planet. Meat should be a luxury. Seafood should be for the coast only, and people in large cities that don't produce food should pay more for it with their increased capabilities in manufacturing and tech sectors.
Food should just generally be more expensive. I know that's hard to hear, but if you start a garden or raise livestock you will understand how ludicrous it is to buy a dozen eggs for 0.89$ or boneless, skinless chicken breasts for 3$ a pound. I'm in a grocery store in Ohio right now looking at out of season Mexican cantaloupe for $2.50 each and navel oranges grown in the tropics for 0.30$ each, bagged apples that have been stored at 1 degree above zero for 9 months at 3 dollars!!! Salmon from the Pacific ocean for $12.00/lb!!! That's all absolutely ludicrous. The true cost is at least triple for each of those "deals", but that true cost is pushed onto the environment and the devastatingly poor citizens of the "third world"
Gardening on whatever scale possible should be mandatory, not by law, but by common sense.
Everything has to change, and it won't because we won't make the sacrifices necessary. The genie is out of the bottle and it's not going back in.
astoria 06
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reading 06
barcelona 06
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dusseldorf 07
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this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
I do battle with a new large colony of yellow jackets every summer.
Whats the difference between wasp, hornet, yellow jacket anyway? could have been any of those.
I'm pretty sure we only have European Hornets in America. Most "hornets" in America are German Yellow Jackets or brown Paper Wasps that are behaving aggressively, which is a hallmark of the Hornet.
Yellow Jackets form large colonies and most of our other wasps are solitary and parasitic.
The key to distinguishing a wasp from a bee is the elongated body and lack of hair. Paper wasps are social like yellow jackets but they always build above ground, while yellow jackets are often underground. Yellow Jackets are more yellow than black and paper wasps are the opposite and thinner. Yellow jackets use a side to side hovering motion to enter the nest and wasps will go straight to it. Wasps keep to themselves much more, yellow jackets forage actively and attack aggressively.
I read that before white settlers came to America there were no honey bees- those were introduced. But there were other pollinators. In any case, we keep disrupting natures cycles and that in of itself is going to screw things up.
As for wasps and hornets- some I like, some not. I got nailed on the top of the head by a swarm of paper wasps one time. That was HUGELY painful. But that all critters and plants have a roll in natures cycle and all organisms- even us- are occasionally victims. It's a bummer when we are a victim, but that's life- and death- as nature means it to be.
astoria 06
albany 06
hartford 06
reading 06
barcelona 06
paris 06
wembley 07
dusseldorf 07
nijmegen 07
this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
There are family members that I scold and to stop "shooing" the bees. They will go to the flowers just be patient. Then they always do with nary a sting.
I've only ever been stung by a bee when I step on one barefoot.
only becomes a problem when they build their nest under my patio table. Or in my wood pile, or under where I kept my spare trash can. In all of those cases I got stung 5 or 6 times when I accidentally discovered it. Can’t really have a wasp nest under my patio table.
"Is everybody in? WAKE UP!!!"
I know there are some outfits that are promoting home beekeeping. Apparently you can get trained and supplied with everything you need, including the bees, pretty easily and cost effectively, and set up a hive in your backyard in no time... There should be a lot more marketing of this though, and that marketing should be taken on by the provincial government IMO. I would love to see this whole concept really take off, and for the government to subsidize such programs. The only problem, though, is that some amateur beekeepers are accidentally letting their bees escape, and there are swarms of them harassing citizens. That said, there are now also companies that specialize in bee collection. So those being terrorized by the escaped swarms can call these collectors, and they'll come and take the bees away, and get them back into hives.
I recently learned that the Vancouver Police Department keeps bee hives on the roof of their HQ. They even had the bees blessed, lol. That's kinda cool.