1/6/18
4/24/12
4/20/12
7/21/09
7/12/09
Sad to have neglected this blog for so long. Busy with Facebook and Jeff's NNM site mostly. Ebay auctions as well. Mowing and mowing yards and lawns, chipping wood the electric line guys left. Bummed about Herbert and Arlene. Nursing 'Bo who somehow got a big honkin' hole in her side at last week's farm party. Burning CDs for Amy's wedding and working on the cover. Standing by while Junior DOESN'T make the chase. Diggin' on the Phillies, but not so much acquiring Pedro, I'm still pissed off at him for throwing Don Zimmer to the turf . . . asshole. Fighting the urge to open up Audiomulch and mix sounds like a mad scientist but . . . there's other more pressing business to attend to . . . still . . . stuff to scan, gotta clean off the junk from atop the Ensoniq, send Steve some snare drum sounds, rehearse with Faith for our weekly Happy Hour gig at the Eagle, learn how to play the Telecaster now that the Ibanez needs work . . . still . . .
6/19/09
6/6/09
New Track
HERE COMES SUMMER!
We like spring because there's fifty shades of green and the geese come back and the damned birds build nests in our roof gutters and little rabbits dart across the trail in front of us\ and the sky is azure w/ no humidity and everywhere you look new life is percolating . . . but upon close inspection there's this urgency to all the doings, like maybe the critters aren't having as good a time as we are . . . anyhoo, we submit this work. It was done in the Ensoniq ASR-10, me and Faith taking turns adding stuff til we lost interest . . . thank God for fade outs lol
We like spring because there's fifty shades of green and the geese come back and the damned birds build nests in our roof gutters and little rabbits dart across the trail in front of us\ and the sky is azure w/ no humidity and everywhere you look new life is percolating . . . but upon close inspection there's this urgency to all the doings, like maybe the critters aren't having as good a time as we are . . . anyhoo, we submit this work. It was done in the Ensoniq ASR-10, me and Faith taking turns adding stuff til we lost interest . . . thank God for fade outs lol
5/18/09
5/12/09
5/10/09
5/9/09
4/27/09
4/25/09
From DB - Unreleased Beatles?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBjj3pkw_nY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMdH32mbVrs&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKkF81d8ks0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d57dLA-cUig&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW7kAOi_Dp8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3NXlgeaIlo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlLfxeCLWcs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2s98LQA-vU&feature=PlayList&p=195C4F07F85F589B&playnext=1&index=32
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMdH32mbVrs&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKkF81d8ks0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d57dLA-cUig&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW7kAOi_Dp8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3NXlgeaIlo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlLfxeCLWcs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2s98LQA-vU&feature=PlayList&p=195C4F07F85F589B&playnext=1&index=32
4/23/09
4/20/09
4/14/09
4/2/09
Shyamalan At The Pagoda!
M. Night Shyamalan begins filming his new flick today. In Reading. At the Pagoda. The Pagoda's gonna be an ancient temple!
3/2/09
1/19/09
1/10/09
12/8/08
11/11/08
10/17/08
From Jeannie - Helmet To Convey Messages By Thought
Known as synthetic telepathy, the technology is based on reading electrical activity in the brain using an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Similar technology is being marketed as a way to control video games by thought.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/13/thought-helmet.html
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/13/thought-helmet.html
From Jimmy - A Lifetime Of Camping
Some food for thought for this upcoming week. This is from George Ures site
....http://www.peoplenomics.com/
A Lifetime of Camping
Imagine for a moment that we're back in mid-summer of 1929 and we had foreknowledge of the Crash of 1929 and were tasked with giving people generally as much forewarning as possible in order that they might be able to prepare for it and help both themselves and fellow countrymen through it with the least amount of hassle/trouble/worry/stress possible, given the epic nature of the changes ahead. Oh, and just to make it a little more challenging, assume the words "Great Depression" had not been coined - as they hadn't. Our modern analog to this is the present day, a limited vocabulary (as labels come after the fact), we think we've got some insight into what's ahead, but the description is limited. There are a few words that have come through the predictive linguistics which can help one prepare for whatever-it-is coming. One of these is Diaspora - essentially the 'scattering of people to the winds' kind of thing. So as a planning construct, how would you plan for it?
Consumption's Collapse
It has been my contention since the early 1990's that at some point in what was then the future, the current global economic system would 'melt down' and something akin to global chaos would result. Unfortunately, it more of less has to work out that way because our current economic models are all based on continuous expansion of the economy. Obviously, in a world which requires growth, any contraction in the economic engine can set up dire consequences.
Think of a model airplane engine. I don't know how much time you've spent playing with them, but some of them can be started and run backwards. The economy operates much the same way. Once started in a particular direction, things keep going that way as long as there is fuel. The fuel for the economy being increasing consumption and new business niches to fill. Hence, the explosion over the past 25-years of the consumer services sector. Things like video stores, instant pizzas, and so forth.
But once the fuel is starved - and the engine quits, as it has now, being starved for 'easy money' which used to come from granting access to people's home equity so it could be squandered on items like full-sized SUV's and so on, there's a very good chance that once started again that the engine will start in reverse which will eat through whole segments of the society as a reciprocal of the earlier expansion.
---
This doesn't just apply to 'consumer goods' although that has been a large driver of things, to be sure. There's also been a cooperative finance system which has not only unlocked housing equity to spur what should have been future consumption, but along with that new forms of financial instruments have been invented which allowed big corporations to make money on making money - the 'money for nothing' addiction that's playing out in the banking system right now.
Although a deal to provision $700 billion to shore up the banking system seems like a done deal, at least according to reports this weekend, there is, nevertheless, the broader problem of people realizing the limitations of 'money' is fundamentally unchanged, hence my expectation that the long-term outcome will be unpleasant.
For those of us who are average investors, one of the central tenets of building personal wealth has been shot to hell over the past couple of years, namely that 'house/land prices always go up.' Certainly, recent events argue this is not the case. And there goes the average family's best inflation hedge.
At the core of the problems I spend my time researching is one simple question: "What should I (any average investor) be investing in today in order to preserve the value of our work over time?"
In periods when inflation was obvious, buying a house with as little money down as possible made sense. Been there, done that, with a huge home in 1973 - four bedrooms, shake roof, two fireplaces, three bathrooms, and plenty large enough for the amazingly low price of $43,950 with a 7½ note.
In a deflationary period, which means when housing prices are falling to put a simple indicator on it, the 'right' action is to rent and collect cash because in a deflationary period, 'Cash is King'.
But the problem which has then arisen most recently is this: How safe is the cash? With banks gong out of business at rates not seen since the Great Depression, how safe is the cash in a bank? Not only has it historically not kept up with inflation, but a major failure at a large institution like WAMU would have exhausted money available from FDIC. Oh sure, the government would give them more, but that in turn is inflationary.
Enduring Values - The Biggest Game
The only course of action I've been able to noodle out - and the one I am on today - is to extract one's self from the financial 'wrapper' that banks and money-promoters have flung about society. In other words, go through life living in such a way as to deliberately live under your lifestyle potential and take the difference between this voluntary restriction of consumption and what you really could afford and put it into things of enduring value.
What has enduring value? We return to the basics of being a human: Water, Food, Shelter, and some other basics like that.
Remember that a person who owns a home outright doesn't have to worry about what 'the market' assigns for a price to it. Price doesn't matter if you are not buying and not selling. It becomes an abstraction.
Now let's play a little game. Suppose I gave you $100 cash and said "Go make an investment that would be able to provide as near $100 worth of food in a year, how would you spend it in order to have the highest certainty of having $100 worth of food a year from now?
One choice would be to run to the store this very instant, buy7 $100 worth of food and just sit on it. Come a year from now, you'd pop open the cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew (and whatever else you bought) and you'd be able to eat. If you had a freezer, you might have pizza, or you could just buy some make-it-yourself pizza - whatever the decision, you'd at least have food.
Amazingly, there are people who given the $100 will not buy food with it at all. Instead, they will take the $100 and invest it in stocks or mutual funds and expect that the stock fund will give them back more money a year from now, so that they might actually come out ahead. Of course, once the 'hidden fees' come through, the odds drop a bit, and the stock market on a purchasing power adjusted basis is actually down since early 2000, but you see the point I hope: People have been programmed to be compulsive gamblers, but they don't understand the risks - they mistakenly call their approach 'investing'.
Actually, they might be right some of the time. But what happens when this kind of investment goes terribly wrong? Say you put all your money into Lehman stock a year ago and you were depending on it to be your only way to buy food for the next month. How hungry would you be?
If you had a keen insight into government policy - and you could discern whether we are in an inflationary or deflationary period, another approach would be to invest in gold, silver, or even oil - any commodity out there should do fine over time - if we're in an inflation period.
Flipping that around to the deflationary side, you could simply hold cash, such that with 25% deflation, you'd be able to take your $100 and buy the same amount of groceries in the future for just $75.
However, there's a catch to that one: You have to worry about the fundamental acceptance of "Dollars" - folks may want something other than a debt-backed currency.
There is, as you might expect, a trick to the question, that most people don't catch: If the task is to have $100 worth of food in a year, you could simply buy about $6.00 worth of seeds and grow your own food. It's not that hard to do. Takes work, sure, but the question was how do you get $100 worth of food in the most certain possible way?
Given a good mix of heritage seeds (e.g. the kind that can reproduce), A 10-pound sack of whole wheat, a pile of fishing hooks and some basic gear and directions to a nearby lake, a person with even a modest plot of land can not only have $100 worth of food, but more'n likely they'd be able to buy a decent $20 bottle of wine to accompany their harvest.
At the end of a year -especially if youi didn't have much else to do but read, study, and tend your garden - you'd not only have $100 worth of food, with some diligence, you would have a thriving little farm. Perhaps hundreds of dollars worth of food and certainly enough to barter for this or that. And, you'd be able to go on to the next year with no further 'money' investment.
That's the point here: learning to live in a non-dollarized world.
No, you can't eat dollars. No, you can't eat gold. Or silver. What you eat is food and the best way I can think of to lower individual reliance on the financial system is to ask "Can I get to what I want without money? If not, what's the least expensive way to do it?"
Not of my kids owns a car (and they are approaching age 30). My son had a car for a while, but decided that he didn't want to work to support a car. So he has a bike, walks a prodigious amount, and when he really needs to drive, someone is paying him to do so.
Daughter Denise has a small ($1,500 class) motor scooter. Daughter Allison is a bus and bike person. They have avoided one of the big spending traps of life - auto's which come with companions insurance, maintenance, licensing, and traffic jams.
Having demonstrated how the "I own the outcome, and who needs money?" works, I'm the first to admit that it's not that way for everything. There are things that no, you can't do yourself. Eye surgery or a hernia repair, come to mind. But in the main, people really can do a lot more than they give themselves credit for.
I'd wager dollars to doughnuts that people displaced from Houston who had camping gear fared way more comfortably and with much less stress than people who had never stepped out of a condo before. And that gets us to the crux of this week's report:
Time's Nearly Up?
If the predictive linguistics are right about October 7th, then we might see something like this weekend's proclamations of a breakthrough/solution to the banking crisis is at hand and then right around the hot date, a series of cascading global bank failures.
At some level, there will be nothing for most people to do stand by to activate their personal survival plan, which when I think about it is like planning to go camping. Except it is like going camping forever. And there's nowhere to resupply
Along that line, even a simple book at "Camping for Dummies" might make the difference between life and death, and those old Boy Scout books are sure good references.
Since we've had language pointing to this fall for such a long period of time, the events that follow could be exceptionally large and life threatening. I've been telling you that for some time now, so it should not come as too much of a shock when events actually happen.
In keeping with the possibility that things will become as dire as the linguistic say they might, here's a list of what I'd be collecting if I were faced with the prospect of 'camping forever" if the world ever really feel apart.
It is also available here in Microsoft Excel run in compatibility mode so it may work with OpenOffice...
Topics:
Water
Food
Shelter
Energy
Communication
Transportation
Finances
Environment
Medical
Arms, Fishing, Hunting
Gear, Clothing
Pioneer Kit
Trading Goods
Water
Sources
Barrels (with 4 tablespoons of pure chlorine bleach per 55 gallons)
Toilet tank
Hot Water Hear drain
(Short hose for above, water will be muddy at first)
Rainwater collections/gutter system
(tarp, barrel, sand for filter for above)
Bleach Chlorine, unscented for every bit of questionable water
Cup(s) of known size
Water purification tablets
Filters
Permanent type or
Replaceable cartridge type
Iodine tabs or other water purification tablets
Collection
Creeks and streams (filter, disinfect, or shock treat with bleach first)
Roofs/gutter collection system
plastic tarp on ground draining downhill to collective vessel, washtub, dishpan, etc.
(stakes or rocks to hold on-ground tarp).
Empty water bottles to fill with purified/boiled water
Funnel
Canteens (2 per person)
Minimal Use
Budget 1 gallon per person per day
Food
Basic Utensils
2,4, 6 qt pans with covers
Large Dutch oven
Sun oven
BBQ with spare fuel
Paring and kitchen knives
Pot holders
Dish soap
Scouring pads and wash clothes
Dish towels
Place setting for twice as many people as are expected
Salt (!!! Iodized regular, waterproof containers for it)
Pepper (corns and grinder)
Basic spices
Corkscrew
Pasta strainer/pasta fork
Many can openers - manual (need you ask?)
Plastic or metal cups/glasses
Metal kabob skewers
Grill cleaners
Spatulas
Pancake turners
Tongs
foil
Paper towels (that won't last long)
Bar towels and bleach
Hand cleaner (goop)
Crisco or other shortening (Crisco is a great hand crème - we don't cook with it, but great for chapped hands)
Dish pan
Dish drainer
Serious camping knives (Bowie, Spyderco, etc style)
Pocket knife
Soup ladle
Silverware
Whisk
Juicer
BBQ fish or meat wire rack (for toast, etc)
Muffin cups
Bread pans (4)(
Pie Pans (Cliff might be over)
Trivets
Folding table
Fire Tripod
Charcoal or wood
White Gas camp stove with fuel
White gas camp light
Tarp for table cloth
100 feet 3/8's nylon line (rope, then lubber)
Clothes pins
Ivory Soap
Laundry Soap
Gallon of bleach (chlorine, unscented)
Wire rack
Pizza pan
Cookie sheets
Rolling pin
Measure cups, measuring spoons
Copy of "The Joy of Cooking"
Book on butchering meat if you plan on fresh game
Outside food prep table (rough food prep)
Popcorn popper for use over fire
Manual wheat grinder
meat grinder
Manual beater
Strainers/colanders
Propane striker
Waterproof matches (1,000 minimum)
Canned
Canned soups (Min 60 cans assorted, many cream of mushroom)
Canned milk
Canned chili
Canned stews
Canned 'hearty' soups
Corned Beef hash
Canned beans (min. 3-dozen cans)
Canned chicken, precooked
Canned Danish hams
Canned fish/shrimp/clams
Cans of spaghetti sauce Minimum 40 cans large
Pie fillings - many, assorted
Canned fruits (apples, etc) to make the canned pie filling more bearable0
Canned potatoes
Lots of canned veggies
Canned tomatoes (many)
Canned tomato paste
Capers
Canned butter
Lime Juice
This & That’s
Dried yeast for breads and pastries
Salt (Iodized) 5 pounds
Sugar (brown, organic)
Molasses (10 bottles0
Baking powder (6 cans)
Sour dough starter, nonfat dry milk, etc
Lemon juice (bottles - many)
White wine for cooking
Red wine for cooking
3 gallons apple cider vinegar
3 gallons soy sauce
Lots of oyster sauce for Chinese food
Sesame oil
5 gallons of olive oil in metal cans
Dried chipped beef (for sos)
Start collecting bacon fat
Chicken broth (canned or bullion)
Canned chicken and fish broths (misso soup base, too)
Genuine maple syrup (2 gallons)
Almond extract
Vanilla extract
Nutmeg
Meats
Beef cut , wrapped and frozen
Chicken, fowl, cut wrapped and frozen
Frozen hams, bacon, yada yada
Pantry - General
Chinese egg noodles (60 lb)
Wheat (whole grain, nitrogen pack, 75 -200 lbs)
Rolled oats 40 pounds
Corn meal (60 pounds)
Soda Crackers (5 pounds)
Cornflakes (6 large boxes (breading and eating)
Rice 50 lbs minimum
Pet food
Couscous
Fancy Italian pastas
40 pounds thin spaghetti noodles
10 pounds wide/flat noodles
Liquids
V-8 juice (a zillion small cans)
Non-fat dry milk
Dozen Kool-Aid packets (trading stock)
Many 5ths of rum, vodka, Jack for disinfecting
4 bottles Everclear (medicinal use)
bitters, lemon juice, lime juice, tomato juice
Shelter
Sheet plastic and duct tape for windows
Sleeping bags
All sheets and towels laundered
2 large blue tarps
6-man tent with ground cloth
build small 'rocket stove' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_stove
Small boxwood/Franklin type stove
6 sheets exterior plywood 1/2"
30 2X4's
20 3' wide x 8 foot metal roof (flat channeled not corrugated
Roofing nails
5000 nails and hammers (Better: nail gun (air ) with power source)
Misc plumbing supplies
Misc electrical supplies
Lighting
Spare light switches *& outlets
Spare bulbs for everything
LED Flashlights - 2 per person
LED Headlamps
Nightvision with illuminators (2)
Rechargeable 2 mln candlepower light
Some candles
A few kerosene lamps
Spare wicks
Many boxes of match - many and many more
Solar powered security lights
Plumbing
2 spare toilet gaskets
1 toilet repairs kit
2-year supply of septic tank 'food'
6 cans of lye
100 pounds masonry lime
100 pounds Portland cement
250 feet of pvc pipe - all sizes
Fresh pvc glue cans and primers
wide range of pvc fittings
water mains wrench
spare well pump
Manual well pump backup
Energy
Batteries - small
Small calculator and other
AAA
AA
C
D
Lantern batteries
Supplies for perimeter alarm system
More batteries- you can never have too many!
Solar System
Solar Panels
Inverters (main plus backup)
Battery Bank
Charge controller
Heavy wiring (#2 or larger for batteries)
Battery monitor
Distilled water for batteries (3 gallons)
Hydrometer
Voltmeter - analog
Wiring
100' of 12/2 with ground
lots of electrical tape
outlets, weatherproof boxes, plus, etc
Ground rod, ground clamp
Spare breakers
Solar
Panels with spare controller
2 gallons distilled water for battery bank
Generator
Diesel genset
Fuel (preserved for diesel)
Diesel engine spares kit
Diesel tool kit for repairs
Wind Generator
Spare brushes (if used)
Communications
Radiological
Radiation field survey meter - recent calibration
Good stock of new batteries (NOT alkaline for rad detectors)
Visual
Free-to-Air TV receiver, dish, and small lcd TV
Signaling flashlight(s)
Laminated pocket copy of Morse code or personal code
Emergency Library
EMT First Aid book
"Communicable diseases in Man" (Benenson)
"SAS Mental Endurance Handbook" - McNab
"Nuclear War Survival Skills - Kearney"
"SAS Survival Handbook "Lofty" Wiseman
"Fieldbook" - Boy Scouts of America
"Campcraft ABC's" Catherine T. Hammett
"$50 and up Underground House book" http://www.undergroundhousing.com/
Advanced First Aid
Aural
Emergency cranked weather radio with AM/FM shortwave
Good communications receiver
Backup receiver
2-Way
Ham radio handhelds (VX-7R or similar)
FRS radios
Long distance ham radio gear (radio, dc power cable, battery clips, antenna turner, long wire antenna, key, mic
Internet
Current test of dial-up internet connection for all computers
Hughesnet or WildBlue satellite system
Writing
Many legal pads
Many pens
300 envelopes
"First class" stamps (this could be an investment!)
Many pencils
Entertainment
some kind of musical instrument - you may have time to learn it
Transportation
Walking
Good walking shoes
Details area maps out 10-20 miles (county maps)
Compass
GPS with spare batteries, key waypoints pre-entered
Beef jerky
Back pack
Pistol, ammo, cleaning gear, waterproof pouch
2 or more canteens
field kit (cooking basics)
Steel & flint
Serious knives
Basic first aid kit
100' 3/8" line
Small tarp
Water disinfection tabs
Small weather radio
Flashlight
(Nightvision)
one man tent, ground cloth, sleeping bag
Bike
Bike rack
blowout proof' tires
basic wrenches, patch kit, pump
bike trailer (?)
Water bottles
Gear from walking kit
Finances
Cash
Small bills
Gold
A coin or two
Silver
Some rounds
Barter Goods
22 shells (20)
Shotgun shells (bird shot) (5)
Have someone watch your back with pistol
Environmentals
Various
2 years of toilet paper
paper towels galore
grazing animals to keep yard down (sheep, goats)
More ivory soap
Lava soap
Goop
Windex
3-in-1 oil
Mouse traps
Roach traps
anti-snake pellets or sulfur
spider spray
Nytril gloves
Cotton balls
q tips
dust masks
allergy meds
fire extinguishers
garden hoses for fire suppression
plastic sheeting
duct tape
Medical
Complete kick butt first aid kit
allergy meds
antacids
more BandAids
surgical kit if not in FirstAid
Prescription for infections
Silver wire (.999+ and 3 9-volt batteries for colloidal silver generation)
Tincture of Iodine
Everclear (alcohol)
151 rum (anesthetic)
eye wear
Neosporin (3-6)
eye wash
boric acid
Epsom salts
cold packs (6)
hot packs (6)
N-95 dust masks (100 per person)
Aspirin
Ibuprofen
dental floss
Vitamins
Minerals
Arms, Hunting, Fishing
Arms
Long arm (long barrel)
2,000 rounds for it
Cleaning gear
Assault repellant
2,000 rounds
Cleaning gear
Small game gun (.22)
5,000 rounds (barter stock)
cleaning kit
Pistols (9 mm)
500 rounds
cleaning kit
Spare bottles of Hope's #9 solvent & oil
many bags of patches & cotton swabs
WD-40
Air rifle with scope
500-1,000 pellets
Misc
Machetes (2)
Pocket knives (2 ea. 3 1/2 in semi serrated edge, single hand open)
Case type pocket knife, one each
Leatherman tools
Slingshots and shot
Misc. small animal traps for possums, coons, etc
skinning and butchering gear
Kevlar gloves
local topo maps, lake locations for fishing
read game tracking book!
Fishing
1 rod per person
small tackle box each
Flies, lures, spare line
300 fishing hooks and line as trading stock
Gear, Clothing
Clothing
Cammo clothing
Pants
jackets
T shirts
shorts
socks (many, many pairs)
ear muffs
work gloves
shooting gloves
Hiking shoes (two pair, steel toe)
sneakers
Loud whistle
Gear
Sleeping Bag
Nail clippers (2)
Tooth brush (3 each)
Deodorant (2)
Aftershave
Old spice (chigger areas)
Backpack
rucksack
Hiking stick
Los of spare shoe laces
Double & single edged razors (20-30)
shaving cream (bar and cup)
shaving brush
shaving towel
Vaseline or Crisco
small scissors
Sewing kit
carabineers (4)
hand warmers (depends on area)
Body warmers (depends on area)
mosquito net
off or deet
sun hat
sun glasses/clip-on's
bandanas (3 per person)
sleeping bag
ground cloth
cammo (burnt cork, whatever)
flint and steel (each person)
roll of toilet paper each
sanitary napkins
anti-bacterial soaps
portable hammock
50 feet of line
Space blankets (3 per person)
Pioneer Kit
1,000 gallon water mount for gravity feed system
2 seed kits - sealed - heritage seeds
garden spades (2)
rakes (2)
hoes (2)
scythe
grass clippers
organic fertilizer
buck saw
fencing material
25 lbs 16 penny gal nails
pry bar
large roll of sheet plastic/visqueen
ax
hatchet
100' each 2/8, 1/2 and 5/8
Chain saw, spare chain, 2 cycle gas mix (stabilized), bar oil
Hammer
Saws crosscut and rip 8 or 10 point)
lot and lots of nails, fasteners
some glass sheets
tin roofing (not corrugated, flat panel
good assortment of misc lumber
tons of screws, screwdrivers (manual)
Misc hardware: hinges, more hinges
Deer fencing for garden
Fencing staples
posts
posthole digger
picks (2)
shovels (assorted)
large tarps - 3
50 lbs of rock salt (preservation of various things)
Canning jars, lids, rings, and gear (large pot for boiling/sealing)
Mosquito netting
Fish netting
Plastic garbage bags
Barbed wire for fencing
Sharpening Stone
Wire ties
Trading Goods
Chewing gum
Candy bars
Cigarettes
cooking oil in cans
Coffee
Tea bags
Booze (pints and fifths only)
Toilet paper
Soap
.22 ammo
Seeds
And, of course, it goes without saying (or does it?) that this list is only my personal dream list and what I've been working toward for several years. Done all at once, the task is daunting, but if you chi9p away at things, it can be done, although we're not up to strength in all areas yet.
Planning to go "Camping Forever" may sound extreme/overboard/just plain nuts on the surface. But thousands of people who prepared for Y2K found when they were laid off as the Internet Bubble burst that they were able to eat and even prosper as they suddenly found that instead of working 12-hours, or more, per day, they could actually craft a life that was less work-paper-buy oriented. Instead they could take the alternative study-do-harvest which didn't involve nearly so much paper money.
Linguistically, 2009 is what Cliff calls the "year of Transformation". In order to best be able to cope with it, a person needs to be able to think of Life as one big camping trip.
I'm constantly reminded of this when I'm chatting on the 2-meter ham radio, as I was last night on the way back from town with Elaine. One of my friends spends about every other weekend out camping or doing outdoors activities with Boy Scouts. Last night's report from their camp site was that the corned beef hash was excellent (Libby's) and that the camp dishes were being done and the Scout Master was taking a break (sneaking in a good cigar, but we won't tell).
There were centuries of human history when such things as Scouting didn't really matter - everyone was in effect camping, most of the time. Wars, floods, famines, all these push people around a fair bit, killing no small number in the process. As the industrial Age unfolded, however, Scouting groups came to the fore - and in a strange way, they serve as a counter-balance to the economic excesses of the recent past. They remind me that it's still possible to head out into the woods with decent gear, a good knowledgebase, with a steel, flint, and knife, and do just fine.
The skills that go with scouting have been evolved over all of human history - if you can't remember at least a half dozen kinds of camp fires you can build, you've essentially isolated yourself from a glorious past.
Contrast this rich history (without which you wouldn't be here) with the recent gyrations in the financial markets and this sudden "Hurry up!" rush to cobble together $700 billion of our taxpayer money.
It just screams that we might all be about to go camping shortly because a lot of people in positions of so-called leadership forgot the Scout's motto.
Be prepared.
One Follow Up Item
I put the following on the free site (UrbanSurvival.com) earlier in the week:
"We'll just watch Google's news search engine. This morning, "bailout" has 129,656 hits (you can check it yourself, as results may vary by which Google server you hit possibly, while "rescue plan" had 34,174 hits. That's a total of 163,830 'hits'. My back-of-the-envelope theory suggests the Google News Search engine can be used as a "truth detector" for some things. "
Updating the numbers Sunday morning: Bailout: 156,343 hits. Rescue Plan 84,884 - that's 241,227 total. It means that "rescue plan" is now 35.188% of use.
Lesson: Linguistically, the spin is in and the folks in Washington who received an overwhelming response from the general public of "No Bailout Bill!" have just steamrolled over the Will of the People -- again.
Makes my case for "No incumbents" pretty strong, eh?
What's the Outlook?
If October 7th (or close to that) is right in the linguistics, what are the three top possibilities as far as "What doing to happen?"
1. The first possibility to be considered it that of a major terrorist attack on American soil. Recall that al Qaida has a desire to 'beat America' and one way to do that would certainly be to attempt a major disruption when the economy is seen as being weakened from a banking crisis, be only a month out from election, and what have you. Although the true cause of a terrorist attack may not be visible - and could be stated as 'caused by extremists' there's a whole series of layers that connect all power with all instruments of power, including terrorism, so no telling who in the New World Order/Corporate Reality could be pulling the strings.
In this scenario, there would be a terrorist attack, including something of an NBC panic, which would in turn cause the U.S. government to go with something approaching martial law and a lockdown on finance until the situation can be rectified. Since panic would accompany such an event, and due to the frailty of the American/Global economy, an attack in this timeframe could be more devastating by orders of magnitude more than 9/11. The terrorist bombing prior to the Spanish elections comes to mind.
This would be the "exogenous" (outside the market) kind of event to be looking for - as would an attack on Iran, a sudden brushfire war (like Georgia) or perhaps a showdown between the Russians and Chinese (with Muslim interests on one side of the equation with corporate globalism on the other on the issue of "money" China, for example, declaring that any bailout plan that involves printing up more money would be a declaration of economic warfare against the People's Republic - well, that kind of cascading failure would have enormous potential impact. Again, exogenous.
2, My favored course of future developments right now is what I'd call the "failure to perform" scenario - because we've gotten so good at that -- which is where the world's financial markets have been led to expect that America will come up with a solution to the bailout (which appears to have happened now, hence an early week rise in the market seems possible) but then toward the end of next week for there to appear "difficult issues" which could then warp into irreconcilable issues, and there goes the bailout and along comes market lockup.
This would be an 'endogenous' (internal to the markets) response. Right now, the markets ought to be in the crapper, but the prospect of 'free money' in the form of bailouts is keeping them well bid up. That would go by the wayside under this scenario, and rational pricing would return, which would argue for a Dow Industrial average about half (or less) of its present value just based on yields that are appearing in the fixed income markets.
Yuck.
Cliff favor's the "butterfly wings" scenario (see Butterfly Effect).
"Imagine that every morning a fellow shows up to unlock the offices of the LIBOR (London Inter-Bank Overnight Rate) clearinghouse and his key breaks off in the lock.
For the next several hours, there's frantic calls to security while the lock is replaced and the place finally opens for business. BUT, because there has been such a global dependence built on LIBOT that even a failure of a few hours might be all that's required to induce panic in the marketplace. And the conditions within the market, being drawn up so tightly that no standard 'noise' issues can be tolerated, the market goes into Panic Mode and that's the end of civilized economic life as we knew it; arguably, 36% interest is not civilized, but we've tilled that ground previously.
Something as simple as a broken key could do it "For want of a nail, the Kingdom failed" kind of thing.
3. Left field events could pop up. What if Russia and China got together and demanded money backed by gold? What if OPEC announced a 'gold standard for oil'? Or any of a thousand and one other things we don't even have language for at the moment. With a major turn of events like the one that seems about a week-10 days out, there's always the chance that a whole new word - or word use - will arise to describe events and it could be something we haven't considered because there are several hundred thousand words in Cliff's lexicon, but how much can one guy do "blinking between this view of model space and that" to see what's moved and then do 'reverse lookups of hex number series to figure out what words and concepts were shifting"?
So the left field is always full of surprises (and trash thrown in from the third base area). It could just be a lot bigger
Our HOPE is that none of this will be right and we will simply have gotten well ahead on our home self sufficiency plans - which would be fine.
While it would be splendid if the 'emotional release' period that starts in a week plus 2-days turned out to be the kind of emotional release that comes from the tensions of modern life melting away - like might accompany a major elevation of millions to a state of spiritual enlightenment, I'm not putting a lot of money on that outcome. Might fit linguistically but doesn't seem too likely.
So, just as there are some people who 'require a religion' in order to place themselves in a certain context within Universe, that may be fine for them, but until that 'rumored' spaceship-comes-to-save-us appears over Alabama for three days around September 15th actually happens, I'll just keep my money on more terrestrially oriented outcomes.
The way I have it figured is this: If there are space aliens, they wouldn't be coming here for our colleges and universities - I assume if they have space/dimensional travel, they've got us whipped there. Moreover, if they were coming here to look for humanitarians and "good souls" this is not exactly the highlight of that area of humanness. Nor would they be coming here for resources like dilithium crystals. Those ought to be plentiful given the size of Universe.
Nor would they likely be coming to "save us" although a lot of sites go to that - a bit far fetched don't you think?
Nope, if they're real, I figure they're coming for dinner. And expecting 'salvation' from space? I'd put as much faith in that as opening a petting zoo for scorpions.
....http://www.peoplenomics.com/
A Lifetime of Camping
Imagine for a moment that we're back in mid-summer of 1929 and we had foreknowledge of the Crash of 1929 and were tasked with giving people generally as much forewarning as possible in order that they might be able to prepare for it and help both themselves and fellow countrymen through it with the least amount of hassle/trouble/worry/stress possible, given the epic nature of the changes ahead. Oh, and just to make it a little more challenging, assume the words "Great Depression" had not been coined - as they hadn't. Our modern analog to this is the present day, a limited vocabulary (as labels come after the fact), we think we've got some insight into what's ahead, but the description is limited. There are a few words that have come through the predictive linguistics which can help one prepare for whatever-it-is coming. One of these is Diaspora - essentially the 'scattering of people to the winds' kind of thing. So as a planning construct, how would you plan for it?
Consumption's Collapse
It has been my contention since the early 1990's that at some point in what was then the future, the current global economic system would 'melt down' and something akin to global chaos would result. Unfortunately, it more of less has to work out that way because our current economic models are all based on continuous expansion of the economy. Obviously, in a world which requires growth, any contraction in the economic engine can set up dire consequences.
Think of a model airplane engine. I don't know how much time you've spent playing with them, but some of them can be started and run backwards. The economy operates much the same way. Once started in a particular direction, things keep going that way as long as there is fuel. The fuel for the economy being increasing consumption and new business niches to fill. Hence, the explosion over the past 25-years of the consumer services sector. Things like video stores, instant pizzas, and so forth.
But once the fuel is starved - and the engine quits, as it has now, being starved for 'easy money' which used to come from granting access to people's home equity so it could be squandered on items like full-sized SUV's and so on, there's a very good chance that once started again that the engine will start in reverse which will eat through whole segments of the society as a reciprocal of the earlier expansion.
---
This doesn't just apply to 'consumer goods' although that has been a large driver of things, to be sure. There's also been a cooperative finance system which has not only unlocked housing equity to spur what should have been future consumption, but along with that new forms of financial instruments have been invented which allowed big corporations to make money on making money - the 'money for nothing' addiction that's playing out in the banking system right now.
Although a deal to provision $700 billion to shore up the banking system seems like a done deal, at least according to reports this weekend, there is, nevertheless, the broader problem of people realizing the limitations of 'money' is fundamentally unchanged, hence my expectation that the long-term outcome will be unpleasant.
For those of us who are average investors, one of the central tenets of building personal wealth has been shot to hell over the past couple of years, namely that 'house/land prices always go up.' Certainly, recent events argue this is not the case. And there goes the average family's best inflation hedge.
At the core of the problems I spend my time researching is one simple question: "What should I (any average investor) be investing in today in order to preserve the value of our work over time?"
In periods when inflation was obvious, buying a house with as little money down as possible made sense. Been there, done that, with a huge home in 1973 - four bedrooms, shake roof, two fireplaces, three bathrooms, and plenty large enough for the amazingly low price of $43,950 with a 7½ note.
In a deflationary period, which means when housing prices are falling to put a simple indicator on it, the 'right' action is to rent and collect cash because in a deflationary period, 'Cash is King'.
But the problem which has then arisen most recently is this: How safe is the cash? With banks gong out of business at rates not seen since the Great Depression, how safe is the cash in a bank? Not only has it historically not kept up with inflation, but a major failure at a large institution like WAMU would have exhausted money available from FDIC. Oh sure, the government would give them more, but that in turn is inflationary.
Enduring Values - The Biggest Game
The only course of action I've been able to noodle out - and the one I am on today - is to extract one's self from the financial 'wrapper' that banks and money-promoters have flung about society. In other words, go through life living in such a way as to deliberately live under your lifestyle potential and take the difference between this voluntary restriction of consumption and what you really could afford and put it into things of enduring value.
What has enduring value? We return to the basics of being a human: Water, Food, Shelter, and some other basics like that.
Remember that a person who owns a home outright doesn't have to worry about what 'the market' assigns for a price to it. Price doesn't matter if you are not buying and not selling. It becomes an abstraction.
Now let's play a little game. Suppose I gave you $100 cash and said "Go make an investment that would be able to provide as near $100 worth of food in a year, how would you spend it in order to have the highest certainty of having $100 worth of food a year from now?
One choice would be to run to the store this very instant, buy7 $100 worth of food and just sit on it. Come a year from now, you'd pop open the cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew (and whatever else you bought) and you'd be able to eat. If you had a freezer, you might have pizza, or you could just buy some make-it-yourself pizza - whatever the decision, you'd at least have food.
Amazingly, there are people who given the $100 will not buy food with it at all. Instead, they will take the $100 and invest it in stocks or mutual funds and expect that the stock fund will give them back more money a year from now, so that they might actually come out ahead. Of course, once the 'hidden fees' come through, the odds drop a bit, and the stock market on a purchasing power adjusted basis is actually down since early 2000, but you see the point I hope: People have been programmed to be compulsive gamblers, but they don't understand the risks - they mistakenly call their approach 'investing'.
Actually, they might be right some of the time. But what happens when this kind of investment goes terribly wrong? Say you put all your money into Lehman stock a year ago and you were depending on it to be your only way to buy food for the next month. How hungry would you be?
If you had a keen insight into government policy - and you could discern whether we are in an inflationary or deflationary period, another approach would be to invest in gold, silver, or even oil - any commodity out there should do fine over time - if we're in an inflation period.
Flipping that around to the deflationary side, you could simply hold cash, such that with 25% deflation, you'd be able to take your $100 and buy the same amount of groceries in the future for just $75.
However, there's a catch to that one: You have to worry about the fundamental acceptance of "Dollars" - folks may want something other than a debt-backed currency.
There is, as you might expect, a trick to the question, that most people don't catch: If the task is to have $100 worth of food in a year, you could simply buy about $6.00 worth of seeds and grow your own food. It's not that hard to do. Takes work, sure, but the question was how do you get $100 worth of food in the most certain possible way?
Given a good mix of heritage seeds (e.g. the kind that can reproduce), A 10-pound sack of whole wheat, a pile of fishing hooks and some basic gear and directions to a nearby lake, a person with even a modest plot of land can not only have $100 worth of food, but more'n likely they'd be able to buy a decent $20 bottle of wine to accompany their harvest.
At the end of a year -especially if youi didn't have much else to do but read, study, and tend your garden - you'd not only have $100 worth of food, with some diligence, you would have a thriving little farm. Perhaps hundreds of dollars worth of food and certainly enough to barter for this or that. And, you'd be able to go on to the next year with no further 'money' investment.
That's the point here: learning to live in a non-dollarized world.
No, you can't eat dollars. No, you can't eat gold. Or silver. What you eat is food and the best way I can think of to lower individual reliance on the financial system is to ask "Can I get to what I want without money? If not, what's the least expensive way to do it?"
Not of my kids owns a car (and they are approaching age 30). My son had a car for a while, but decided that he didn't want to work to support a car. So he has a bike, walks a prodigious amount, and when he really needs to drive, someone is paying him to do so.
Daughter Denise has a small ($1,500 class) motor scooter. Daughter Allison is a bus and bike person. They have avoided one of the big spending traps of life - auto's which come with companions insurance, maintenance, licensing, and traffic jams.
Having demonstrated how the "I own the outcome, and who needs money?" works, I'm the first to admit that it's not that way for everything. There are things that no, you can't do yourself. Eye surgery or a hernia repair, come to mind. But in the main, people really can do a lot more than they give themselves credit for.
I'd wager dollars to doughnuts that people displaced from Houston who had camping gear fared way more comfortably and with much less stress than people who had never stepped out of a condo before. And that gets us to the crux of this week's report:
Time's Nearly Up?
If the predictive linguistics are right about October 7th, then we might see something like this weekend's proclamations of a breakthrough/solution to the banking crisis is at hand and then right around the hot date, a series of cascading global bank failures.
At some level, there will be nothing for most people to do stand by to activate their personal survival plan, which when I think about it is like planning to go camping. Except it is like going camping forever. And there's nowhere to resupply
Along that line, even a simple book at "Camping for Dummies" might make the difference between life and death, and those old Boy Scout books are sure good references.
Since we've had language pointing to this fall for such a long period of time, the events that follow could be exceptionally large and life threatening. I've been telling you that for some time now, so it should not come as too much of a shock when events actually happen.
In keeping with the possibility that things will become as dire as the linguistic say they might, here's a list of what I'd be collecting if I were faced with the prospect of 'camping forever" if the world ever really feel apart.
It is also available here in Microsoft Excel run in compatibility mode so it may work with OpenOffice...
Topics:
Water
Food
Shelter
Energy
Communication
Transportation
Finances
Environment
Medical
Arms, Fishing, Hunting
Gear, Clothing
Pioneer Kit
Trading Goods
Water
Sources
Barrels (with 4 tablespoons of pure chlorine bleach per 55 gallons)
Toilet tank
Hot Water Hear drain
(Short hose for above, water will be muddy at first)
Rainwater collections/gutter system
(tarp, barrel, sand for filter for above)
Bleach Chlorine, unscented for every bit of questionable water
Cup(s) of known size
Water purification tablets
Filters
Permanent type or
Replaceable cartridge type
Iodine tabs or other water purification tablets
Collection
Creeks and streams (filter, disinfect, or shock treat with bleach first)
Roofs/gutter collection system
plastic tarp on ground draining downhill to collective vessel, washtub, dishpan, etc.
(stakes or rocks to hold on-ground tarp).
Empty water bottles to fill with purified/boiled water
Funnel
Canteens (2 per person)
Minimal Use
Budget 1 gallon per person per day
Food
Basic Utensils
2,4, 6 qt pans with covers
Large Dutch oven
Sun oven
BBQ with spare fuel
Paring and kitchen knives
Pot holders
Dish soap
Scouring pads and wash clothes
Dish towels
Place setting for twice as many people as are expected
Salt (!!! Iodized regular, waterproof containers for it)
Pepper (corns and grinder)
Basic spices
Corkscrew
Pasta strainer/pasta fork
Many can openers - manual (need you ask?)
Plastic or metal cups/glasses
Metal kabob skewers
Grill cleaners
Spatulas
Pancake turners
Tongs
foil
Paper towels (that won't last long)
Bar towels and bleach
Hand cleaner (goop)
Crisco or other shortening (Crisco is a great hand crème - we don't cook with it, but great for chapped hands)
Dish pan
Dish drainer
Serious camping knives (Bowie, Spyderco, etc style)
Pocket knife
Soup ladle
Silverware
Whisk
Juicer
BBQ fish or meat wire rack (for toast, etc)
Muffin cups
Bread pans (4)(
Pie Pans (Cliff might be over)
Trivets
Folding table
Fire Tripod
Charcoal or wood
White Gas camp stove with fuel
White gas camp light
Tarp for table cloth
100 feet 3/8's nylon line (rope, then lubber)
Clothes pins
Ivory Soap
Laundry Soap
Gallon of bleach (chlorine, unscented)
Wire rack
Pizza pan
Cookie sheets
Rolling pin
Measure cups, measuring spoons
Copy of "The Joy of Cooking"
Book on butchering meat if you plan on fresh game
Outside food prep table (rough food prep)
Popcorn popper for use over fire
Manual wheat grinder
meat grinder
Manual beater
Strainers/colanders
Propane striker
Waterproof matches (1,000 minimum)
Canned
Canned soups (Min 60 cans assorted, many cream of mushroom)
Canned milk
Canned chili
Canned stews
Canned 'hearty' soups
Corned Beef hash
Canned beans (min. 3-dozen cans)
Canned chicken, precooked
Canned Danish hams
Canned fish/shrimp/clams
Cans of spaghetti sauce Minimum 40 cans large
Pie fillings - many, assorted
Canned fruits (apples, etc) to make the canned pie filling more bearable0
Canned potatoes
Lots of canned veggies
Canned tomatoes (many)
Canned tomato paste
Capers
Canned butter
Lime Juice
This & That’s
Dried yeast for breads and pastries
Salt (Iodized) 5 pounds
Sugar (brown, organic)
Molasses (10 bottles0
Baking powder (6 cans)
Sour dough starter, nonfat dry milk, etc
Lemon juice (bottles - many)
White wine for cooking
Red wine for cooking
3 gallons apple cider vinegar
3 gallons soy sauce
Lots of oyster sauce for Chinese food
Sesame oil
5 gallons of olive oil in metal cans
Dried chipped beef (for sos)
Start collecting bacon fat
Chicken broth (canned or bullion)
Canned chicken and fish broths (misso soup base, too)
Genuine maple syrup (2 gallons)
Almond extract
Vanilla extract
Nutmeg
Meats
Beef cut , wrapped and frozen
Chicken, fowl, cut wrapped and frozen
Frozen hams, bacon, yada yada
Pantry - General
Chinese egg noodles (60 lb)
Wheat (whole grain, nitrogen pack, 75 -200 lbs)
Rolled oats 40 pounds
Corn meal (60 pounds)
Soda Crackers (5 pounds)
Cornflakes (6 large boxes (breading and eating)
Rice 50 lbs minimum
Pet food
Couscous
Fancy Italian pastas
40 pounds thin spaghetti noodles
10 pounds wide/flat noodles
Liquids
V-8 juice (a zillion small cans)
Non-fat dry milk
Dozen Kool-Aid packets (trading stock)
Many 5ths of rum, vodka, Jack for disinfecting
4 bottles Everclear (medicinal use)
bitters, lemon juice, lime juice, tomato juice
Shelter
Sheet plastic and duct tape for windows
Sleeping bags
All sheets and towels laundered
2 large blue tarps
6-man tent with ground cloth
build small 'rocket stove' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_stove
Small boxwood/Franklin type stove
6 sheets exterior plywood 1/2"
30 2X4's
20 3' wide x 8 foot metal roof (flat channeled not corrugated
Roofing nails
5000 nails and hammers (Better: nail gun (air ) with power source)
Misc plumbing supplies
Misc electrical supplies
Lighting
Spare light switches *& outlets
Spare bulbs for everything
LED Flashlights - 2 per person
LED Headlamps
Nightvision with illuminators (2)
Rechargeable 2 mln candlepower light
Some candles
A few kerosene lamps
Spare wicks
Many boxes of match - many and many more
Solar powered security lights
Plumbing
2 spare toilet gaskets
1 toilet repairs kit
2-year supply of septic tank 'food'
6 cans of lye
100 pounds masonry lime
100 pounds Portland cement
250 feet of pvc pipe - all sizes
Fresh pvc glue cans and primers
wide range of pvc fittings
water mains wrench
spare well pump
Manual well pump backup
Energy
Batteries - small
Small calculator and other
AAA
AA
C
D
Lantern batteries
Supplies for perimeter alarm system
More batteries- you can never have too many!
Solar System
Solar Panels
Inverters (main plus backup)
Battery Bank
Charge controller
Heavy wiring (#2 or larger for batteries)
Battery monitor
Distilled water for batteries (3 gallons)
Hydrometer
Voltmeter - analog
Wiring
100' of 12/2 with ground
lots of electrical tape
outlets, weatherproof boxes, plus, etc
Ground rod, ground clamp
Spare breakers
Solar
Panels with spare controller
2 gallons distilled water for battery bank
Generator
Diesel genset
Fuel (preserved for diesel)
Diesel engine spares kit
Diesel tool kit for repairs
Wind Generator
Spare brushes (if used)
Communications
Radiological
Radiation field survey meter - recent calibration
Good stock of new batteries (NOT alkaline for rad detectors)
Visual
Free-to-Air TV receiver, dish, and small lcd TV
Signaling flashlight(s)
Laminated pocket copy of Morse code or personal code
Emergency Library
EMT First Aid book
"Communicable diseases in Man" (Benenson)
"SAS Mental Endurance Handbook" - McNab
"Nuclear War Survival Skills - Kearney"
"SAS Survival Handbook "Lofty" Wiseman
"Fieldbook" - Boy Scouts of America
"Campcraft ABC's" Catherine T. Hammett
"$50 and up Underground House book" http://www.undergroundhousing.com/
Advanced First Aid
Aural
Emergency cranked weather radio with AM/FM shortwave
Good communications receiver
Backup receiver
2-Way
Ham radio handhelds (VX-7R or similar)
FRS radios
Long distance ham radio gear (radio, dc power cable, battery clips, antenna turner, long wire antenna, key, mic
Internet
Current test of dial-up internet connection for all computers
Hughesnet or WildBlue satellite system
Writing
Many legal pads
Many pens
300 envelopes
"First class" stamps (this could be an investment!)
Many pencils
Entertainment
some kind of musical instrument - you may have time to learn it
Transportation
Walking
Good walking shoes
Details area maps out 10-20 miles (county maps)
Compass
GPS with spare batteries, key waypoints pre-entered
Beef jerky
Back pack
Pistol, ammo, cleaning gear, waterproof pouch
2 or more canteens
field kit (cooking basics)
Steel & flint
Serious knives
Basic first aid kit
100' 3/8" line
Small tarp
Water disinfection tabs
Small weather radio
Flashlight
(Nightvision)
one man tent, ground cloth, sleeping bag
Bike
Bike rack
blowout proof' tires
basic wrenches, patch kit, pump
bike trailer (?)
Water bottles
Gear from walking kit
Finances
Cash
Small bills
Gold
A coin or two
Silver
Some rounds
Barter Goods
22 shells (20)
Shotgun shells (bird shot) (5)
Have someone watch your back with pistol
Environmentals
Various
2 years of toilet paper
paper towels galore
grazing animals to keep yard down (sheep, goats)
More ivory soap
Lava soap
Goop
Windex
3-in-1 oil
Mouse traps
Roach traps
anti-snake pellets or sulfur
spider spray
Nytril gloves
Cotton balls
q tips
dust masks
allergy meds
fire extinguishers
garden hoses for fire suppression
plastic sheeting
duct tape
Medical
Complete kick butt first aid kit
allergy meds
antacids
more BandAids
surgical kit if not in FirstAid
Prescription for infections
Silver wire (.999+ and 3 9-volt batteries for colloidal silver generation)
Tincture of Iodine
Everclear (alcohol)
151 rum (anesthetic)
eye wear
Neosporin (3-6)
eye wash
boric acid
Epsom salts
cold packs (6)
hot packs (6)
N-95 dust masks (100 per person)
Aspirin
Ibuprofen
dental floss
Vitamins
Minerals
Arms, Hunting, Fishing
Arms
Long arm (long barrel)
2,000 rounds for it
Cleaning gear
Assault repellant
2,000 rounds
Cleaning gear
Small game gun (.22)
5,000 rounds (barter stock)
cleaning kit
Pistols (9 mm)
500 rounds
cleaning kit
Spare bottles of Hope's #9 solvent & oil
many bags of patches & cotton swabs
WD-40
Air rifle with scope
500-1,000 pellets
Misc
Machetes (2)
Pocket knives (2 ea. 3 1/2 in semi serrated edge, single hand open)
Case type pocket knife, one each
Leatherman tools
Slingshots and shot
Misc. small animal traps for possums, coons, etc
skinning and butchering gear
Kevlar gloves
local topo maps, lake locations for fishing
read game tracking book!
Fishing
1 rod per person
small tackle box each
Flies, lures, spare line
300 fishing hooks and line as trading stock
Gear, Clothing
Clothing
Cammo clothing
Pants
jackets
T shirts
shorts
socks (many, many pairs)
ear muffs
work gloves
shooting gloves
Hiking shoes (two pair, steel toe)
sneakers
Loud whistle
Gear
Sleeping Bag
Nail clippers (2)
Tooth brush (3 each)
Deodorant (2)
Aftershave
Old spice (chigger areas)
Backpack
rucksack
Hiking stick
Los of spare shoe laces
Double & single edged razors (20-30)
shaving cream (bar and cup)
shaving brush
shaving towel
Vaseline or Crisco
small scissors
Sewing kit
carabineers (4)
hand warmers (depends on area)
Body warmers (depends on area)
mosquito net
off or deet
sun hat
sun glasses/clip-on's
bandanas (3 per person)
sleeping bag
ground cloth
cammo (burnt cork, whatever)
flint and steel (each person)
roll of toilet paper each
sanitary napkins
anti-bacterial soaps
portable hammock
50 feet of line
Space blankets (3 per person)
Pioneer Kit
1,000 gallon water mount for gravity feed system
2 seed kits - sealed - heritage seeds
garden spades (2)
rakes (2)
hoes (2)
scythe
grass clippers
organic fertilizer
buck saw
fencing material
25 lbs 16 penny gal nails
pry bar
large roll of sheet plastic/visqueen
ax
hatchet
100' each 2/8, 1/2 and 5/8
Chain saw, spare chain, 2 cycle gas mix (stabilized), bar oil
Hammer
Saws crosscut and rip 8 or 10 point)
lot and lots of nails, fasteners
some glass sheets
tin roofing (not corrugated, flat panel
good assortment of misc lumber
tons of screws, screwdrivers (manual)
Misc hardware: hinges, more hinges
Deer fencing for garden
Fencing staples
posts
posthole digger
picks (2)
shovels (assorted)
large tarps - 3
50 lbs of rock salt (preservation of various things)
Canning jars, lids, rings, and gear (large pot for boiling/sealing)
Mosquito netting
Fish netting
Plastic garbage bags
Barbed wire for fencing
Sharpening Stone
Wire ties
Trading Goods
Chewing gum
Candy bars
Cigarettes
cooking oil in cans
Coffee
Tea bags
Booze (pints and fifths only)
Toilet paper
Soap
.22 ammo
Seeds
And, of course, it goes without saying (or does it?) that this list is only my personal dream list and what I've been working toward for several years. Done all at once, the task is daunting, but if you chi9p away at things, it can be done, although we're not up to strength in all areas yet.
Planning to go "Camping Forever" may sound extreme/overboard/just plain nuts on the surface. But thousands of people who prepared for Y2K found when they were laid off as the Internet Bubble burst that they were able to eat and even prosper as they suddenly found that instead of working 12-hours, or more, per day, they could actually craft a life that was less work-paper-buy oriented. Instead they could take the alternative study-do-harvest which didn't involve nearly so much paper money.
Linguistically, 2009 is what Cliff calls the "year of Transformation". In order to best be able to cope with it, a person needs to be able to think of Life as one big camping trip.
I'm constantly reminded of this when I'm chatting on the 2-meter ham radio, as I was last night on the way back from town with Elaine. One of my friends spends about every other weekend out camping or doing outdoors activities with Boy Scouts. Last night's report from their camp site was that the corned beef hash was excellent (Libby's) and that the camp dishes were being done and the Scout Master was taking a break (sneaking in a good cigar, but we won't tell).
There were centuries of human history when such things as Scouting didn't really matter - everyone was in effect camping, most of the time. Wars, floods, famines, all these push people around a fair bit, killing no small number in the process. As the industrial Age unfolded, however, Scouting groups came to the fore - and in a strange way, they serve as a counter-balance to the economic excesses of the recent past. They remind me that it's still possible to head out into the woods with decent gear, a good knowledgebase, with a steel, flint, and knife, and do just fine.
The skills that go with scouting have been evolved over all of human history - if you can't remember at least a half dozen kinds of camp fires you can build, you've essentially isolated yourself from a glorious past.
Contrast this rich history (without which you wouldn't be here) with the recent gyrations in the financial markets and this sudden "Hurry up!" rush to cobble together $700 billion of our taxpayer money.
It just screams that we might all be about to go camping shortly because a lot of people in positions of so-called leadership forgot the Scout's motto.
Be prepared.
One Follow Up Item
I put the following on the free site (UrbanSurvival.com) earlier in the week:
"We'll just watch Google's news search engine. This morning, "bailout" has 129,656 hits (you can check it yourself, as results may vary by which Google server you hit possibly, while "rescue plan" had 34,174 hits. That's a total of 163,830 'hits'. My back-of-the-envelope theory suggests the Google News Search engine can be used as a "truth detector" for some things. "
Updating the numbers Sunday morning: Bailout: 156,343 hits. Rescue Plan 84,884 - that's 241,227 total. It means that "rescue plan" is now 35.188% of use.
Lesson: Linguistically, the spin is in and the folks in Washington who received an overwhelming response from the general public of "No Bailout Bill!" have just steamrolled over the Will of the People -- again.
Makes my case for "No incumbents" pretty strong, eh?
What's the Outlook?
If October 7th (or close to that) is right in the linguistics, what are the three top possibilities as far as "What doing to happen?"
1. The first possibility to be considered it that of a major terrorist attack on American soil. Recall that al Qaida has a desire to 'beat America' and one way to do that would certainly be to attempt a major disruption when the economy is seen as being weakened from a banking crisis, be only a month out from election, and what have you. Although the true cause of a terrorist attack may not be visible - and could be stated as 'caused by extremists' there's a whole series of layers that connect all power with all instruments of power, including terrorism, so no telling who in the New World Order/Corporate Reality could be pulling the strings.
In this scenario, there would be a terrorist attack, including something of an NBC panic, which would in turn cause the U.S. government to go with something approaching martial law and a lockdown on finance until the situation can be rectified. Since panic would accompany such an event, and due to the frailty of the American/Global economy, an attack in this timeframe could be more devastating by orders of magnitude more than 9/11. The terrorist bombing prior to the Spanish elections comes to mind.
This would be the "exogenous" (outside the market) kind of event to be looking for - as would an attack on Iran, a sudden brushfire war (like Georgia) or perhaps a showdown between the Russians and Chinese (with Muslim interests on one side of the equation with corporate globalism on the other on the issue of "money" China, for example, declaring that any bailout plan that involves printing up more money would be a declaration of economic warfare against the People's Republic - well, that kind of cascading failure would have enormous potential impact. Again, exogenous.
2, My favored course of future developments right now is what I'd call the "failure to perform" scenario - because we've gotten so good at that -- which is where the world's financial markets have been led to expect that America will come up with a solution to the bailout (which appears to have happened now, hence an early week rise in the market seems possible) but then toward the end of next week for there to appear "difficult issues" which could then warp into irreconcilable issues, and there goes the bailout and along comes market lockup.
This would be an 'endogenous' (internal to the markets) response. Right now, the markets ought to be in the crapper, but the prospect of 'free money' in the form of bailouts is keeping them well bid up. That would go by the wayside under this scenario, and rational pricing would return, which would argue for a Dow Industrial average about half (or less) of its present value just based on yields that are appearing in the fixed income markets.
Yuck.
Cliff favor's the "butterfly wings" scenario (see Butterfly Effect).
"Imagine that every morning a fellow shows up to unlock the offices of the LIBOR (London Inter-Bank Overnight Rate) clearinghouse and his key breaks off in the lock.
For the next several hours, there's frantic calls to security while the lock is replaced and the place finally opens for business. BUT, because there has been such a global dependence built on LIBOT that even a failure of a few hours might be all that's required to induce panic in the marketplace. And the conditions within the market, being drawn up so tightly that no standard 'noise' issues can be tolerated, the market goes into Panic Mode and that's the end of civilized economic life as we knew it; arguably, 36% interest is not civilized, but we've tilled that ground previously.
Something as simple as a broken key could do it "For want of a nail, the Kingdom failed" kind of thing.
3. Left field events could pop up. What if Russia and China got together and demanded money backed by gold? What if OPEC announced a 'gold standard for oil'? Or any of a thousand and one other things we don't even have language for at the moment. With a major turn of events like the one that seems about a week-10 days out, there's always the chance that a whole new word - or word use - will arise to describe events and it could be something we haven't considered because there are several hundred thousand words in Cliff's lexicon, but how much can one guy do "blinking between this view of model space and that" to see what's moved and then do 'reverse lookups of hex number series to figure out what words and concepts were shifting"?
So the left field is always full of surprises (and trash thrown in from the third base area). It could just be a lot bigger
Our HOPE is that none of this will be right and we will simply have gotten well ahead on our home self sufficiency plans - which would be fine.
While it would be splendid if the 'emotional release' period that starts in a week plus 2-days turned out to be the kind of emotional release that comes from the tensions of modern life melting away - like might accompany a major elevation of millions to a state of spiritual enlightenment, I'm not putting a lot of money on that outcome. Might fit linguistically but doesn't seem too likely.
So, just as there are some people who 'require a religion' in order to place themselves in a certain context within Universe, that may be fine for them, but until that 'rumored' spaceship-comes-to-save-us appears over Alabama for three days around September 15th actually happens, I'll just keep my money on more terrestrially oriented outcomes.
The way I have it figured is this: If there are space aliens, they wouldn't be coming here for our colleges and universities - I assume if they have space/dimensional travel, they've got us whipped there. Moreover, if they were coming here to look for humanitarians and "good souls" this is not exactly the highlight of that area of humanness. Nor would they be coming here for resources like dilithium crystals. Those ought to be plentiful given the size of Universe.
Nor would they likely be coming to "save us" although a lot of sites go to that - a bit far fetched don't you think?
Nope, if they're real, I figure they're coming for dinner. And expecting 'salvation' from space? I'd put as much faith in that as opening a petting zoo for scorpions.
9/18/08
Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' = 2001 Space Baby?
The passing of Pink Floyd's Richard Wright still remains a painful subject at Listening Post. But coupled with the earlier and still saddening loss of sci-fi titan Arthur C. Clarke, it is nearly unbearable.
And eerie, considering that Pink Floyd's mind-blowing "Echoes," written by all of the band members long before petty divisions tore them apart, was a perfect soundtrack to Clarke and Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Pink Floyd's seminal Meddle was the first release in what was to be the band's storied run at the record books, and "Echoes" commanded the entire second half of the album. It is an epic without peer in rock, which hordes of resourceful fans would eventually mash in near-perfect synchronization with 2001's storied finale "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite."
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/in-memoriam-pin.html
And eerie, considering that Pink Floyd's mind-blowing "Echoes," written by all of the band members long before petty divisions tore them apart, was a perfect soundtrack to Clarke and Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Pink Floyd's seminal Meddle was the first release in what was to be the band's storied run at the record books, and "Echoes" commanded the entire second half of the album. It is an epic without peer in rock, which hordes of resourceful fans would eventually mash in near-perfect synchronization with 2001's storied finale "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite."
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/in-memoriam-pin.html
9/17/08
From Suzanne - Dolphin Bubble Play
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMCf7SNUb-Q
Video of dolphins playing with silver colored rings which they have the ability to make under water to play with. It isn't known how they learn this, or if it's an inbred ability.
The dolphin does a quick flip of its head and a silver ring appears in front of its pointed beak. The ring is a solid, donut shaped bubble about 2-ft across, yet it doesn't rise to the surface, but stands upright in the water. The dolphin then pulls a small silver donut from the larger one. Looking at the twisting ring for one last time a bite is taken from it, causing the small ring to collapse into a thousands of tiny bubbles which head upward towards the water's surface. After a few moments the dolphin creates another ring to play with.
An explanation of how dolphins make these silver rings is that they are "air-core vortex rings". Invisible, spinning vortices in the water are generated from the tip of a dolphin's dorsal fin when it is moving rapidly and turning. When dolphins break the line, the ends are drawn together into a closed ring. The higher velocity fluid around the core of the vortex is at a lower pressure than the fluid circulating farther away. Air is injected into the rings via bubbles released from the dolphin's blowhole. The energy of the water vortex is enough to keep the bubbles from rising for a reasonably few seconds of play time.
Video of dolphins playing with silver colored rings which they have the ability to make under water to play with. It isn't known how they learn this, or if it's an inbred ability.
The dolphin does a quick flip of its head and a silver ring appears in front of its pointed beak. The ring is a solid, donut shaped bubble about 2-ft across, yet it doesn't rise to the surface, but stands upright in the water. The dolphin then pulls a small silver donut from the larger one. Looking at the twisting ring for one last time a bite is taken from it, causing the small ring to collapse into a thousands of tiny bubbles which head upward towards the water's surface. After a few moments the dolphin creates another ring to play with.
An explanation of how dolphins make these silver rings is that they are "air-core vortex rings". Invisible, spinning vortices in the water are generated from the tip of a dolphin's dorsal fin when it is moving rapidly and turning. When dolphins break the line, the ends are drawn together into a closed ring. The higher velocity fluid around the core of the vortex is at a lower pressure than the fluid circulating farther away. Air is injected into the rings via bubbles released from the dolphin's blowhole. The energy of the water vortex is enough to keep the bubbles from rising for a reasonably few seconds of play time.
9/11/08
9/3/08
From Sean:
Typewriters Morph Into Creepy Sci-Fi Creatures
http://www.wired.com/culture/art/multimedia/2008/09/gallery_typewriter
http://www.wired.com/culture/art/multimedia/2008/09/gallery_typewriter
8/23/08
Net New Music
Composer Jeff Harrington's Website - Our page:
http://netnewmusic.ning.com/profile/JohnnyFaith
http://netnewmusic.ning.com/profile/JohnnyFaith
8/20/08
8/6/08
From Sean
I learned something I thought was quite fascinating today, about pencil lead of all things...
Some time prior to 1665 (some sources say as early as 1600), an enormous deposit of graphite was discovered at the site of Seathwaite Fell near Borrowdale, Cumbria, England. The locals found that it was very useful for marking sheep. This particular deposit of graphite was extremely pure and solid, and it could easily be sawn into sticks. This was and remains the only large scale deposit of graphite ever found in this solid form
Some time prior to 1665 (some sources say as early as 1600), an enormous deposit of graphite was discovered at the site of Seathwaite Fell near Borrowdale, Cumbria, England. The locals found that it was very useful for marking sheep. This particular deposit of graphite was extremely pure and solid, and it could easily be sawn into sticks. This was and remains the only large scale deposit of graphite ever found in this solid form
7/26/08
FROM SEAN
Holy Crap:
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14250-microwave-ray-gun-controls-crowds-with-noise.html
More Holy Crap:
http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/08/1513259&from=rss
* * *
FREE PET TREATS!
http://www.freepettreats.com/form/?p=subscribe&id=1
* * *
SPIRITUAL EFFECTS OF MUSHROOMS PERSIST
http://www.physorg.com/news134110402.html
* * *
Holy Crap:
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14250-microwave-ray-gun-controls-crowds-with-noise.html
More Holy Crap:
http://idle.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/08/1513259&from=rss
* * *
FREE PET TREATS!
http://www.freepettreats.com/form/?p=subscribe&id=1
* * *
SPIRITUAL EFFECTS OF MUSHROOMS PERSIST
http://www.physorg.com/news134110402.html
* * *
7/15/08
Back To The Sixties
Boomer Nostalgia with music:
http://cruzintheavenue.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm
http://cruzintheavenue.com/TakeMeBackToTheSixties.htm
7/4/08
Faugh, but . . .
Awright, so the "Amazing Ball Girl Catch" below is a fake, shot for an unreleased Gatorade commercial. I still love it, and not just for the impossible catch. You watch this thing and your mind is so boggled by what it just saw that it fails to process what it sees next: Namely, a shot of the catcher, who started out a righty, but is now a lefty. My fave spot of 2008 anyhoo.
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