Sid Morrison's Comments

Miss C is clearly doing a lot of REUSE. Nice job. I'm not a rapid environmentalist, but I am an engineer, which makes me cheap by nature. Hence, I've got a LOT of reused coffee cans, spaghetti jars, &c.

"Recycling" can have a broad or narrow definition. The broad one means not throwing the scrap in a landfill and thus includes reuse. The more narrow one means to reprocess the waste, often at low efficiency and a LOT of energy (gas/oil/electric) expense.

As for the Omnivore's Dilemma: I've heard the author speak in interviews (NPR maybe for one...) and he's rather unrealistic in many spots. He would have a WHOLE lot more credulity if he were actually a farmer or had some experience in the subject. He doesn't and it shows. Some of the things he pushes makes sense, but a lot of it if adopted on a wide scale would result in hugely dramatic drops in agrcultural efficiency. Establishing self-sufficiency in lots of little farms as he suggests eliminates a lot of huge efficiency benefits that come from having Farmer A plant a lot of corn, Farmer B concentrate on apples, Farmer C on dairy, &c. Distributing the crops enables each farm to operate at MUCH higher levels of efficiency than they would if each grew a little of everything and had to buy less pecialized equipment to handle the gamut. His method has some idealistic benefits, but the current method (while not flawless) enables a LOT more food to be produced for the whole world on less land and with less energy input. For an individual *subsistence* farmer, his ideas have merit to keep the family fed. To feed a nation or the world, no.

Straight Talk from Sid.
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It's crap to blame the sinking of all these firms on teh credit crunch. Most of them are directly victims of their own incompetence. Have you ever been in a Circuit City, for example? 'Nuff said.

The managements of every underperforming poorly run company are licking their chops to be able to blame their failures on "the credit crunch". The same thing happened for 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, rising fuel prices, &c. It's a huge copout. If you run a firm, it must be robust to market swings. Take responsibility and stop using these lame excuses to placate shareholders and seek a little free government bailout teat.

Straight talk from Sid.
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Yeah, this story made no sense to me at all. The only person owning this cash should be the current homeowner. If she so chose, she *could* give the contractor a reward for his honesty in not sneaking off with it, but she'd be under no obligation to do so. I can't imagine decendents of the guy who owned the place 70 years ago having any claim. If the homeowner didn't wind up with everything, she has a TERRIBLE lawyer.
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I told my kid that if he doesn't keep his nose clean, there will be no stick for him this Christmas.

My friend's three kids have been behaving themselves, so he's considering getting them rock, scissors, and paper.

Yuk, yuk, yuk...

The funny thing is that the Strong Museum recently recently put in some very major expansions and financed them partly by selling antiques from their long-held collection ... standard museum pieces that no longer fit in with their modern re-alignment to a "Museum of Play" image. To this end, they hired "experts" to appraise the items that were being offered for sale. Well, it turns out some of the "experts" they hired weren't all that hot and some REALLY valuable items sold for pennies on the dollar. So, if you knew your antique vases, you could get a $1.5 million vase for $20K. Needless to say, when this all came to light, there was a lot of embarrassment.

And now they have exhibits of sticks.
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It all depends on the size of one's "cup", afterall. I only have 2 cups worth, but each are 16oz. So maybe that is about a pot. Needless to say, I bring a thermos to work otherwise I'd be quite poor.
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This past week Shorpy.com ran another "recent pic" of Kim meeting with other commie brass. Today's picture is GOOD photoshopping by comparison. In the one I refer to, the entire group looks to be hovering over the concrete on which they are "standing" -- it looked like they were pasted right on like Colorforms.
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Anybody remember those great "Coffee Achiever" commercials in the U.S. run by the coffee industry? Those were great... fast paced, really frantic with the chorus of "Hold on tight to your dreams!" Hah hah... I am guilty of being a coffee achiever myself.

Make mine black and REALLY strong. If it's available, I'm stir in a dash or two (or 3) of unsweetened cocoa powder (sort of half-dissolves) for some extra anti-oxidents. The resulting sludge will kill anything trying to invade my body.
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The link reminds me a lot of this one:
http://www.neatorama.com/2007/02/04/the-worlds-safest-table-saw/

deja vu....

Neat idea, but pricey. Might be worthwhile for shop classes with lots of new saw users. That said, anybody who lobbies Congress for laws to MANDATE their product is a scumbag. Mandated safety in general sucks. It's a big reason why we drive very expensive overly heavy gas sucking cars. If not for the efforts of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, small 4 passenger cars would be available in the U.S. that didn't weigh 3200# and cost $25K. Give people choice, whether it be for tablesaws, vehicles or whatever. The public will value safety features by how deeply they dig into their pockets. Don't force us into anything...
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And as a followup, I really don't think these crimes (because that's what is undoubtedly going on) are that difficult to solve with a little serious investigative work.

1. The affected area is very tightly confined. It's a small zone!
2. The type of crminal activity demands a lot of discrete behaviour. The perp is living within that triangle or very close.
3. To be discrete, I doubt the guy is roaming around at night chasing cats. Rather, he's got a trap set up with a can of Whiskers® in his backyard (er... rear garden since this is the U.K.) and letting the victims come to him.
4. Cats do roam, but the roaming areas aren't all that large... aim for the centroid of the triangle as a starting point. The perp doesn't have control over where the cats roam in from, so the further one gets from the triangle centroid, the less likely it is where
to find the perp. It's not impossible that he'll be on the outskirts or even outside the traingle, just a LOT less likely.
5. Start interviewing residents house by house, surveying who lives there.
6. Who might harm cats? young psychos, satanists, wild bird lovers, some super serious flower gardeners, people who raise dogs for fighting, &c. Ask local kids who the creepy neighbors are. Group each house into "liklihood bins" -- VERY UNLIKELY, UNLIKELY, POSSIBLE, LIKELY, or whatever.
7. 50 is a huge number of cats for a developing psycho to take out before moving on to something else. No other animals falling victim? -- The guy specifically hates *cats*, so concentrate on who that might be rather than sadists in general.
8. I think tormented teenagers less likely. Whoever is doing this has a lot of privacy and probably operates alone. If it's teenagers, the parents are *really* absent and oblivious. There is probably a trap set up and the perp operates frequently at night. Juvenile delinquents are *possible*, but maybe less likely than an adult with his own place.
9. Probably a single person with a lot of privacy and no accomplices to start talking. A couple is possible, but less likely, and any more even less likely.
10. My prime profile -- a middle aged male bird lover or flower gardener who lives alone. Look for the how with the fenced in backyard and a LOT of bird feeders.

Seriously, this isn't an enormous area for the RSPCA to investigate (at least some preliminary legwork) if the police are claim they are "too busy". It wouldn't be too tough to identify a half-dozen "high probablilty" suspects and park a surveillance van watching how active their homes are at night (look for lights on and off in the middle of the night). This activity must be going on at night since the cats roam most then, are unsupervised for hours, and not many prying eyes about.

When you come up with a couple "likely profile" people who ALSO live near the triangle center and who are ALSO busy at night, you should watch them like a hawk and try to get some real evidence on them. This honestly shouldn't be too tough to figure out -- there's a mountain of geographic data already. Just track 'em down and stop thinking about kooky non-likely supernatural or animal predator explanations.
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Well, duh, it shouldn't be a mystery. Somebody in the area hates cats and is doing them in and disposing of the remains. Cats are not large (generally) so it isn't like hiding horse carcasses or something. If it was an animal predator of some sort, there would be, ahem, "evidence". The complete lack of evidence should make it clear there is a human criminal behind it.

Still, I'm completely amazed that these people still let their cats outside!!! The owners are pretty stupid and neglectful of their pets' well-being to do so. Would you let your kids roam around outside if dozens had disappeared prior. Stupid asses.
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Profile for Sid Morrison

  • Member Since 2012/08/07


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