The Real Shit on Biosolids

There’s a lot of shit going down in Halifax these days in the fight over the safety of biosolids, or human sewage used for fertilizers.

One side is claiming they can get all the bad shit out of the people’s shit so it’s safe to use. The other is claiming there’s no way that shit can be clean and appealing to people’s feelings on eating food grown in shit. I’m not going to advocate for either side because I don’t know shit about the shit data, but I don’t need to. What I will do is point out some interesting shit people who don’t know shit seem to be neglecting that makes this whole shit spit irrelevant. There are some healthy food that’s not subject to this, but most people don’t eat that shit when you look at the big picture.

First, would you rather eat food grown in your shit or someone else’s shit?

A lot of food in the grocery stores are grown in other places, fertilized by other people’s shit. California, Mexico, China and other places all allow shit to be used as fertilizers, and a lot of shit, too! (Halifax Herald story, with research from the Nova Scotia Environmental Network, via the Organic Consumers Association)

So are you telling me you’d rather eat food grown in their shit rather than food grown in your shit?

Hey, lots of people have prejudices against Chinese and Mexicans. They make lots of jokes about them, too. Ironically, the last laugh may be on those people cause they’re probably eating food grown from Chinese and Mexican shit. Ewwhahaha!

You and I are probably eating food grown from foreign shit, too. Maybe not fresh food as you may get your fresh food locally, but think about the processed food. Do you know where all of it comes from?

To be honest, though, if I had to eat food grown from people’s shit, I might well eat those grown from other people’s shit. Part of the fear about eating food grown in our own shit is all the chemicals we ingest that can’t get filtered out, especially drugs we take for illnesses or lifestyle, like birth control pills. The boomer generation is by far the most drugged up generation ever. In poorer parts of the world, those people don’t have access to such “luxuries”. I’d be willing to bet their shit is a lot cleaner than ours and would take the risk to eat food grown from their shit rather than ours. It’s just that they have pesticides and other chemicals that probably make them more harmful overall.

Second, would you rather eat food grown from animal shit than your own shit?

Have you seen or heard about the shit that’s been going into animal feed lately? There’s everything from growth hormones to genetically modified crops to low quality reject foods, and very possibly more of that shit than real food! Those animals are, well, animals! What did you think they were, people, to be worth feeding better shit to? And the shit they get fed is nasty shit, even in the world of shit! Birth control pills and medications are like organically grown peanuts compared to that shit. Watch Food Inc. on this site to get a little taste, though the superb documentary covers a lot more shit than that and is real good shit for anybody to know about the nature of the food they eat.

Animal shit has been used as nature’s fertilizer over the millennia. However, that was when animals ate stuff Mother Nature fed them, not the shit we’re feeding them today. If you know all the shit the animals you eat are fed, whose shit fertilizes fields other food you eat are grown in, I’d be willing to bet you’d take food grown from your own shit any day!

Finally, why are you concerned about fresh food grown in shit compared to all that processed shit you’re eating?

Seriously, few people these days don’t eat processed food, whether frozen dinners or fast food, not to mention drinking pop. Obesity is an epidemic for a reason, you know, not to mention a lot of other health conditions stemming from shitty diets. A little shit here or there that gets through from food grown in shit, or food fed shit in the case of animals, is nothing compared to all that bad shit out there people are eating. Even the good shit, if frozen or processed to much like frozen organic entrees, isn’t all that good shit to be eating.

Conclusions

All in all, worrying about a little shit that might get through after Mother Nature, and possibly filtration plants, have filtered your shit in which you grow your food is misplacing your concerns. There’s a whole lot of other shit out there you ought to be raising shit about.

All right. Enough of this shit.

I hope I won’t get in trouble for talking about this shit…

Oh, shit.

Watch Kings Ransom on the Gretzky Trade to LA (entire documentary)

If you were Canadian and alive on August 9, 1988, your life stopped at least for a little while, if not got changed entirely. I know my life got changed entirely. That was the day the Edmonton Oilers traded the greatest NHL player ever, to an American team, in the same division. It was the trade of the century, without a doubt.

Over 20 years later, ESPN produced a phenomenal documentary on that trade called Kings Ransom, as part of their fabulous 30 for 30 series of documentaries. It puts a lot of new perspective and filled in a lot of gaps to the story. Also, with time, we could follow all the story lines to their conclusions, some of which were quite surprising, from the destinies of Peter Pocklington and Bruce McNall, to Wayne himself, his marriage, and what he has done for hockey in the US, especially California area, as well as hockey in Canada and hockey as a business.

It was too bad this documentary hasn’t gotten more buzz in Canada.

Below is the documentary in 4 video clips posted by a YouTube user called HockeyWebCaster. Thanks for posting.

I hope you enjoy and recommend to others who may be interested.

I cried a lot that day when Wayne was traded. Watching this documentary, I did it again. I wonder what the guy next to me on the Air Canada flight to San Francisco thought. 🙂

What’s Your Song of Friendship? (Part 1 of 7 on the World in Six Songs)

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Book and Theory Background

Daniel J. Levitin wrote an absolutely brilliant book called The World in Six Songs, supported by a great website with the many music samples referenced, among other great related material.

My basic paraphrasing of the concept is this. All the songs in the world could be fit into at least one of six categories providing an evolutionary benefit to humanity, often ultimately tied to our social nature.

The book and website offer far more detailed interpretations, of course, but I will expand on my paraphrasing with each post and the associated topic.

Daniel J. Levitin and The World in Six SongsIn a series of posts, I will describe each of the six categories in brief, one at a time:

  1. Friendship
  2. Joy
  3. Comfort
  4. Knowledge
  5. Religion
  6. Love

I will describe what the categories are about because they are not as limited in scope as the category names suggest. I will then supply one of my choices and ask all readers to do the same if they so wish. In the seventh post of the series, I will offer the chance to put the song choices all together so readers can read the entire set on one post. I do this because it would be a long post to describe all six categories at once, but to have all the answers in one place might be nice.

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This post focuses on Songs of Friendship

July 30th add-on in italics, from Dan Levitin in a summary article
Friendship songs centre around group cohesion, whether it be for war, or the bonding of different cliques in high school. For example, in prehistoric warfare, attackers would sometimes ambush another tribe using loud instruments (especially drums) to surprise the targets while they were still sleeping. Countertactics employing the use of singing may also have been used as a signal that the group was awake.  These songs serve to protect a tribe/group or succeed in the takeover of another. In the context of social groups, they provide a sense of community and belonging, bringing people together.

These songs serve the purpose of bringing people together to promote cooperation in one form or another in order to survive, or at least make life more tolerable. Applied to various situations, cooperation could promote any of these situations:

  • Working together
  • Attacking/defending together
  • Supporting each other
  • Friendship
  • Averting conflict
  • Forging group identity (maybe not formally but like a bonding anthem for a group of “outcasts”)
  • Others

The evolutionary value is that humans interact socially, whether in friendly or destructive ways. If we can avoid the latter, like in wars, we are more likely to survive and thrive as a species. Our social bonds are essential to our well-being, and we do survive and thrive better in groups, so anything that helps us in these causes are beneficial to our evolution as a species.

Audio sample of songs from the Friendship chapter in The World in Six Songs can be found on the website. No direct link was available, but click on the Songs menu option and appropriate page number range link carrying pages 41 to 82. Please note that not all songs are meant as samples of Friendship songs. Some are just referenced material in the book text.

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Author Daniel Levitin chose

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My choice for Song of Friendship is

You’ve Got a Friend by Carole King (lyrics).

It fits into the Friendship subcategory of various bonding purposes, but I do believe that true friends ultimately help each other. There isn’t any other song I know and feel tells someone they’ve got a true friend better than this Carole King song. Nobody sings it better, either!

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What is your choice for Song of Friendship?

Please leave your choice as a comment.

Lyrics and YouTube/audio link would greatly enhance your answer so readers can know more about your choice. They are not necessary, though, and not possible if no lyrics or version exist.

You can include songs you wrote as a choice, too!

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 10.5

Music CD Facebook Picture Tagging Memes

I did not create these Facebook picture tagging memes, but I improved their quality and optimized their make-up for Facebook usage. I do not know from where they come originally so there is no source link. I only wish they had more resolution to them, being just a bit bigger than the display versions below. Nice idea and plays on words, nonetheless.

To use any of these for your Facebook tagging fun:

  • Click on the picture to get it at full size.
  • Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
  • Upload it to your Facebook profile.
  • Tag your friends!

Please click here for a complete list of Facebook picture tagging memes on this site with which you can use for fun with your friends.