Fried Green Tomatoes ... it'll be like that.

Funny thing is- lots and lots of deer running around here, everybody has killed one with a car, usually to tune of big bucks for repair ( groan!), and yet people who bitch about too many deer DON'T hunt them!

Right at the moment I have three split carcasses hanging in my coldcave, awaiting my work, and a lot more of my wife's work, to put them into nice little bags for the year's meat.

I tell people we eat no meat but deer and chickens. They shudder in disgust, as if I have confessed to cannibalism-- Jeez. I am sure that in need they would eat deer, or for that matter, rats -or students, but not now, still high on petroleum, they scorn anything but fat sizzling beafsteak.

So, I agree with Orlov- the higher we are flying now, the harder we hit the rocks when we run out of juice. So, for goddssake, people, let's get down to a lower altitude fast, please.

But then I keep coming back to that old bad, bad thought lying back there in my reptile brain- maybe people aren't worth saving anyhow.

I wonder about crawfish and nutria. In part because of their habitat(s) and limited human access to some of them.

Alan

At what point did the profits of multinational corporations become more important than the lives of farmers?

More important than the lives of everyone who isn't part of the rentier class.

If you think about it, we've not only been mining out the last of the oil, ores, and top soil, but even the health of our people. We feed them an all-corn-all-the-time diet, raised with Frankenchemicals on nutritionally depleted soils, and then suck the people who eat this crap into the for-profit health industry (Big Pharma) for the rest of their lives. (Chris Rock: The money isn't in the cure. It's in the come-back.) The people are malnourished and obese, and to deal with their symptoms we sell them drugs that destroy their livers. Then we sell them drugs to handle the symptoms of their destroyed livers.

All so the rentier class can get a cut of everything we do.

The other day x put up a comment in which he said that the key to dealing with peak oil was increasing utility--what that basically means is we need to get the rentier class off the backs of the people, and put the resources in the hands of the many, where they can do the most good. That's what westexas's ELP prescription actually comes down to as well. If we actually did that, I think peak oil could actually improve the quality of life of most people.

Of course, so far we're doing exactly the opposite--at the moment, the government is throwing everything we've got left at the rentier class.

I believe Airdale hails from W. Kentucky.

Hi all,

Now this is just one observation, but here in Vancouver, BC, I overlook an urban park with lots of open grassy fields where the kids play baseball and soccer. Three bird species are in strong supply at this park: geese, gulls and crows. Just yesterday evening, as the cool blue light of dusk began to fade I took a walk around the park, and watched the geese take off, group up in their classic V-formations and head south, probably to the wetlands around Richmond. Recently, I took my daughter to visit a pumpkin patch, and we saw a healthy population of ducks in a local pond. Also, bald eagles continue to occupy the forested areas around the University of British Columbia, with a host of other species.

I enjoy the antics of the three bird species that dominate the park--especially the crows as they are always getting into everything, with a focus on the garbage cans. Occasionally, we are treated to some other bird species, more often than not chickadees, and one time recently a woodpecker. From the urban "frontier" on the Pacific coast, the limited selection of birds that I see appear to be doing fine. At least for now.

Maybe some migration routes are indeed shifting in your area...

-best,

Wolf

Now that you mention it, it's unsettling. Haven't seen or heard the Snow or Canadian geese this fall. This is the time. I hope it's just late. Been warm, relatively snowless.

Checking, Waterfowler says the mallards should have started moving last week with the cold, they don't show much goose movement. Still in Canada.

http://www.waterfowler.com/inportal/index.php?env=-map#

Seriously. Anyone my age thinks government is pretty much completely useless. Lying weasels employing lazy bums.

Even the stuff government does relatively well (roads, sewers, policing) doesn't get much credit.

We've never seen an honest politician (although, reading from any time period from ancient Greece to Twain, neither has anyone else). We've never seen a government program do what it was supposed to, end when it was supposed to, or be much of anything other than a way to steal our money.

We, mostly, aren't yet sick or feeble enough to care about the social safety net. We don't remember a time when it didn't exist. We know that the "homeless" are still collecting welfare checks, even if they choose to drink or inject it rather than use it to eat.

Rely on the government? Hardly. Cluelessly dependent on it? Perhaps.

According to this Minyanville article, http://www.minyanville.com/articles/index.php?a=20126

Typically gold will only go into backwardation when either there is fear of a currency collapse and/or doubt as to whether counter parties will be able to produce gold as promised

There's plenty of fear of a global financial collapse and there's definitely not enough physical gold to meet actual demand if it arose of the need to produce the physical real stuff for the paper type on the futures market. Plus with all the central bank inflation (which may or may not work depending on which country you are in) Gold could easily spike big time.

It means there is a "price" for gold and there is a real price, and the two have begun to diverge over the last six months or so. There's an ETF based on the "price" of gold, and it is manipulated through fancy financial engineering which I cannot begin to understand. Since no actual metal (or very little) was harmed in the making of the ETF it has only slightly more relation to reality than the price of AIG stock.

OTOH you can call up a broker, visit a coin dealer, or shop around on ebay. What you may find is that the real price hasn't declined nearly as much as the "price". Also, it means that people who have it are simply keeping it and not selling at the current "price". A broker whose web page I visit has no platinum, no palladium, and only intermittent supplies of silver and gold since last summer. You must expect to wait several weeks for delivery and pay a premium over spot price.

This is an article written by a gold bug, and therefore is fatally flawed. Just look at the quote: "the gold basis is a pristine, incorruptible ..." There is no such thing. Gold is less useful than wheat (eatable) or crude oil (useful energy): you cannot eat gold, it has no energy content and the industrial uses are limited (more limited that e.g. platinum). Gold has fluctuated enormously in the past (previous peak of the 70s/80s bubble was over $800, then down to $250 in about 20 years, up to $1,000 in a few years and now down to 750.

In the current crisis, cash is king. If you believe in a total collapse, you need land and guns though. Move on to the survivalist sites in that case....

I think the author is referring to the fact that the price of coins is higher than it usually is over the spot price. Much more gold is traded on the paper futures market than is physically moved and delivered. The spot price is determined by these paper trades and as asset classes have been sold to rebuild balance sheets and cover debt the spot price has fallen.
It is true that the physical price of gold bullion coins currently carries a higher premium over spot than it historically has. Many believe this is because the supply of actual coins is less than the demand for them. It is easy to buy a paper contract for gold futures but some believe getting delivery of the underlying asset would be difficult because the different commodity markets do not have enough supply to make delivery if those that held the paper did not roll them over or take cash for their futures contract.