Humans Breed Too Much…

Humans Breed Too Much…

 

Ok this is a little odd for a social issue but it’s one that I think a lot about. Overpopulation impacts many other issues in our country and around the world. As we make more people, we must house them, feed them, cloth them and of course bury them when they die. This has put a huge strain on the world’s ecosystem. As we build more houses and develop more raw land into farmland, we remove more and more of the natural filters (trees and plants) that allow us to breathe. This demand to expand living space and farmland kills millions of acres of trees per year and with them, many plants, fungi and animals are going extinct, some of which might carry the cures for any number of maladies currently ravaging our planet. Combine all of this with a greatly expanded lifespan so that when we do make new people, we come with a one hundred year lifespan, forty to fifty years longer than we have ever lived before. All in all we are breeding ourselves out of existence and if something like a plague or a war doesn’t cull the population down, we are in some serious trouble.

There is a bright spot in all of this. Our society is intent on making everything as convenient and simple by way of technology that is dependent on a very fragile infrastructure. Therefore individuals in our society are by and large becoming less and less self sufficient. The result is that when (not if) this whole technological terror we have constructed comes crashing down around us, a large percentage of the population will have no clue how to meet their day to day survival needs , and good old Darwin will have his way with us. The result will be that most will likely perish. Why would this a bright spot? Because during the dark ages that will ensue, the planet will have a chance to recuperate from all of the damage we have done to it.  Those of us who are self sufficient, especially those who learned to listen to their grandparents and parents (in that order) who went through hard times are the ones who will be prosperous. History shows us that the decline of a society begins when it loses its industrious nature, becomes intent on luxury and is willing to give up basic rights in return for a false sense of security. The Romans went out like this, and so will we. I just hope maybe the next great empire actually learns from our mistakes…because we sure haven’t.

Goodies from the Garbage

Well a couple of days ago I happened to be heading to school and darn near squealed my tires for stopping as fast as I did. I saw what looked like someone had thrown away an outdoor store! This goes toward my "camping with no budget" listing of garbage finds from heaven for sure! In it was :

a decent tent,

a Crossman Air Rifle,

 3 fishing poles with reels and two without,

A base unit CB Radio,

a huge ball of jute twine,

A Lantern style flashlight that worked by just putting the bulb back in,

a set of antlers I will no doubt use to make buttons, knife handles and other assorted items,

A tackle box with a decent assortment of old fishing gear in it, 

and Finally some really decent arrow making materials !

Anyway I brought it all home, the poles are in great shape, one is a big game fishing rig for fishing the great lakes (now I have to make a trip to lake Ontario!) I plugged in the CB unit and it transmits and recieves, I just need an antenna and some cable. The air rifle needed a rivet to re-attach the pump piston to the forearm/lever and the bbs loading gate is a piece of tape but it shoots and has good compression! All in all a good rifle for free.. 

The tent needs stakes and the fishing reels could do with some lubrication and a change of line but all in all, everything works and it all came  from what others threw away. Earlier this year I got a whole set of files, a plane (woodworking, not flying) and a nice (if beat up) Camillus pocket knife, also found a decent hatchet head in the same pile of junk.

A guy down the road picked up a Winchester Model 1300 12 ga from the trash with a cracked stock. With the addition of a hunk of sheet brass wrapped around the grip of the shotgun (where the crack was) , glued and screwed down, he ended up with a really good shotgun...again from the trash!  I personally have intercepted a 22 rifle being thrown away and found a decent 12 ga single barrel shotgun in the trash.

All this for free. People will throw away just about anything and if someone has a mind to, they can equip themselves for the outdoors more than adiquately with a few key investments, some igenuity and a sharp eye on trash day

Didnt make it for an overnight but,..

Well, I just got done watching "Bushcraft Boyz" on You Tube. I tell ya, I really like their style, they go light and yet they are happy and comfortable in the woods. My hats are off to them! Keep it up guys! Id love to see another video!

My last blog left you believing I would be off camping this weekend and for the whole week I believed it too...but it just didnt pan out. I did however find myself in some woods near Lori's house that were small but quite nice. I got to work on some bush craft and picked out a rather nice bow stave. I also made a nice war club and got some materials for my atlatle project! All in all, a very productive afternoon!

Anyway, Im more than a little disappointed not to have camped this weekend but at the end of the day, I did get some small amount of bush time in inspite of things.

Pining for Pines
Now Playing: Bill Stains: Coyote

Im really beginning to get woods withdrawl now. I have not been out in a long long time and I really need a break from the grind. Im starting to get edgy and uncomfortable. People and things feel too close..

So, this comming weekend I am off to the woods, at least for an overnight. I want to get some dirt time before it becomes snow time!

Im going rather minimal again, just my swiss pack, a tarp, my rifle, My Cold Steel SRK, a hatchet or machete(havent decided yet) a really thick wool blanket and some meager rations, most likely hard tack, spam, some rice and a bit of jerky. I hope to have my new hunting license in time for the trip so I can maybe get a squirrel or two for the pot.

That reminds me, I found a nice billy pot amongst some gear I was going through this evening, something from a chinese dollar store. A squat, 1 quart pot with cover and bail made of tin. Its a light little affair and the bail on it is suprisingly robust. I will take that with me along with a tin frying pan I have for Rev War. 

Really gets my heart pumping just talking about it! There are a few choices of comfortable haunts I can go to, one of which I have not been to in quite a while!! 

I hope the weather is good but honestly at this point, a bad day in the woods is better for me that any day here.

Well Im off!
Mood:  bright
Now Playing: its the end of the world as we know it

Well im sitting here at the plumley complex of MVCC, and a gentleman is passing me with a "no whining" t-shirt  on. This really speaks to the reality of this whole collage thing im undertaking. Im 30 and im a freshman in collage. This is very new to me and quite intimidating. I mean, I prepared and all and I know I can do it. Its just that the application of  the knowlage already gained to all this new stuff is going to be an interesting process.  Of course this specific collage is more of a 13th grade for the local highschools and it shows.... Im contemplating starting an outing club here at school. Maybe bring some of these kids to the woods and let them experience the sort of camping and backpacking I reccomend on this site. God knows collage students are living with no budget so camping with no budget goes without saying!

Anyway, I guess Im just rambling so ill log for now

AP: Woman 85 Grabs Her Gun

85-year-old Pennsylvania woman gets her gun and confronts intruder, makes him call police

By Associated Press

10:27 PM CDT, August 19, 2008

"It was exciting," Smith said. "I just hope I broke up the (burglary) ring because they have been hitting a lot of places around here."

----------------------------------------

This is the reason we have the second ammendment. nuff said 

We are Disconnected....
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Society

I just got done watching an old episode of home improvement. This episode had to do with the kids not having very good table manners. Needless to say, Tim was tasked with fixing the issue and failed miserably. And, Like always, he had a chat with Wilson about the situation and wilson's reply was this: The answer is that the kids need to learn to channel their mealtime agressions and of course Tim did not understand this. Wilson elaborated with: Primitive man had an intimate relationship with his food,  he hunted for it, he had to stalk his game for days and days before making the kill, and then, when the kill was made, he thanked the animal for giving its life so that said primitive man, and his family would be able to eat.  This really struck a cord. I mean, I have heard similar things before but this was when it really kinda hit home to me. The problem with society as a whole now days is two fold. One: we have no way to channel our agressions and Two: We have very little connection to the things we use and eat everyday.

In the past, young men were trained to fight and were taught about honor and valor on and off the field of battle. They were taught to enforce their honor at the tip of a sword through the strict codes of conduct used in dueling. This made for a society that as a whole was much more POLITE than our own. One that was far less violant per capita than we are today.

They were taught that there are times that its OK to fight, OK to kill...now that very statement puts people up in arms. Now days, even the most minor schoolyard brawl results in the police being called.  They want a "no-violant solution" to everything and humans were just not built that way. We are a warrior race that has castrated ourselves mentally. Unfortunatly all the social conventions we put up to stop violance CANT WORK because at the end of the day, we are what we are, warriors. The social conventions we put in place serve only to increase the amount of and severity of violance on our streets because the agressive tendancys of our young people that should be channeled into a code of honor and the skills of a warrior (and the ability and right to execute that honor to the ultimate conclusion if needs be) are instead being smothered. This has the same effect as a fire that runs out of fuel in a tightly closed room. It smoulders at an extremely high temperature until it gets oxigen...then it explodes.This Explosion comes in the form of colombine, drive by shootings, people shooting up churches. Its not the weapons or even the peoples fault. Its a society that seeks to remove that which makes us what we are. We are Warriors. 

This same society also has managed to strip us of any connection with nature. Aside from those who hunt, fish or own farms, most people make no mental connection between what they are eating and the source of said food. For that matter, they dont make a connection between the materials in the tools they use dayly and the raw material that was used to create it.

As was said above primitive man hunted for his food, had an intimate relationship with his prey and a deep respect for the sacrifice the prey was making for the man and his family.  Now days very few ever gain an understanding of this. They go to a grocery store and they buy meat, fruit, vegitables etc. without ever thinking of how this food came to be.
The Average person takes it for granted that steaks  and chicken are just there, cut into nice  easy to manage portions and wrapped in plastic , just waiting at the store. They dont make the connection that SOMETHING DIED to give you what you need to survive. No one respects their food anymore. For instance, I was cleaning out the lower crisper in Lori's refrigerator to fill with garden veggies and found some chicken wings bought weeks ago molding away inside their original packaging.. that chicken died so that we could bring home meat we let go rancid because we just didnt have the respect for, or the connection to, the vibrent, living organism that died to provide us with batter dipped chicken wings.

  The Average American now doesnt even have to cut up a chicken into portions, even that is done for them! Forget about dressing, plucking, and THEN quartering said chicken. you give them a live bird, a decent knife and a cutting board and the average american would have no idea how to go about processing the animal into food, and would more than likely be unable to stomach the task in the first place. This is a disease that is infecting our society. Its called complacency. We as a society have no clue what a tenuious hold we have on our food supply. We have overthought our way into a situation where we depend on hybridized vegitables that dont even produce viable seeds, and even if they did, all we get is one kind of seed. So if a blight hits say our potato crop (one of the most important vegitable produced today) we are done. I dont believe that the average citizen can actually process the idea that THERE IS NO FOOD. Now I can go on and on about hairloom seeds and how we should all grow hairloom vegitables in our gardens and harvest the seeds but thats not the point of this blog. The point is that society is really in for a big shock. The average joe does not have the skills to make it should society decide to go belly up on us. The average joe/jane wont be able to cope with the idea that they are on their own. They will panic.

This is a very scary concept for me.  My only answer is to promote hunting, fishing, gardening and preparedness so that more people come around to a point where they have respect for their food..

 

The Political Game??
Topic: Politics as usual
Ok was walking by the tv while getting ready to go to Lori's House when I saw CNN headline news. They were talking about the political mudslinging that the present candidates for US President are up to. they were interviewing people on the streets about this phenomina and more than half of them seemed to think of politics as a game...this is really kinda scary. Our political system is there to govern our country and allow us as americans to choose those who we believe best to run our country. this is no game! The decisions these morons make on our behalf are going to directly impact almost every american citizen and you people think of it as a game?!! Get with it people. This is the life or death of our country and all we have going for us this election is a couple of guys who are neither prepared nor mentally capable of running this country... and those who were qualified lost to these idiots... so if politics is a game, the American people are losing..

Hardwood out of style?
Topic: Scrounging adventures

OK just got back from a short scrounging mission (ill be back out again later!) and I found a good deal of hardwood and molding pieces. some of this will eventually go into my work bench and some for general maintainance tasks. it seems everyone is throwing away hardwood and I wonder why? Old growth hardwood is so rare now and yet people are throwing it away as "firewood".

Just a comment on society and the wastefulness of it... 

Why White Meat
Mood:  sharp
Topic: Media Morons at work

Okay, I was sitting up late last night watching the news before popping in a movie and during a Wendys commercial, they were speaking of the  "all white meat chicken" something or other and the girl (supposedly Wendy) said All white meat because I dont like grey areas in my chicken...

Okay whats the deal with all white meat...I mean, I know its supposedly less fat than dark meat but White meat is also dry, tasteless and has less nutrients than dark meat  on any bird I have ever eaten.. So why is it being touted as the "good" chicken and the dark meat is the "bad" chicken. I mean really, are you going to Wendys to eat healthy? Hell no. So why eat the dry tasteless meat when you can have the tasty dark meat? I mean they smother said "all white meat" in batter and then deep fat fry it anyway thus rendering it just as fatty (if not more so) than dark meat and somehow somewhere they add 3 tons of sodium to the mix negating any health nuts claim to it being "better for you" so why does the food industry in general foist the idea that white meat is better? Not because of the taste which we have already stated is almost non existant... its truly because there is more of it on the chicken so its easier to create mass quantities of white meat chicken products than dark. And if anyone has ever processed a bird, they would know its easier to remove the breast from the bird than the meat of the legs from the bones. So there you have it. Manufacturing costs and quantity are the driving forces behind the "white meat phenomina" 

Not taste....not health..just that they have more white meat than dark and ordinarily anyone with taste buds will tell you which one is better...if the media morons didnt work on them first...