Random Notes About Life
From the editor…
While we were all living through the nail biting suspense of wondering if and when we’d flood, and how bad it would be this year, I ran across a quote that is just so perfect:
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats.”
H.L. Mencken said that, and I don’t know about you, but after this past week I’m sure ready to run up the black flag!
My brother Sean drew the special cover cartoon for us for this issue, which we hope you find amusing.
One of the most remarkable things about this past week has been the absolute lack of accurate official flood updates for our village. In fact, I just checked the River Watch website and the latest information posted is still from 7 am yesterday morning, which is over 24 hours ago!
Our most accurate and up to date sources were actual local residents, who took the time to post on Facebook, take photos and videos and keep track of the ice levels up and down the river and communicate with their friends and neighbours. Just goes to show you who you can really count on in a squeeze, and it’s apparently not the government.
Off to another topic, this is an election year and the battle is heating up in New Brunswick about the path to take regarding our precious natural resources. I attended a political meeting a couple of weeks ago where the subject of fracking was discussed. A couple of older gentlemen in the audience were completely gung ho to get going on getting that natural gas out of the ground…. Damn the torpedoes and ecological impact! Full speed ahead! One of them even called environmentally concerned citizens a “bunch of yahoos”.
Okay, so I’m personally guilty as charged but I think yahoo is a bit harsh. But some other interesting notions popped up. The other gentleman was in full support of fracking as well, and he even enthusiastically embraced the fact that shale gas extraction creates massive tailings ponds, full of toxic chemicals and waste from the process.
He described how we are able to distil fresh water from sea water, as was demonstrated during some recent tsunami disaster somewhere, so we can by golly just reclaim the polluted water from the tailings ponds….it appeared that he considered that the tailings ponds would be kind of like a new resource that would make even more money.
One way to cut back on energy consumption would be if the auto industry made cars that were actually fuel efficient. When Henry Ford made the Model T almost 100 years ago, it got 25 miles per gallon of gas. Today, the average fuel mileage of new vehicles is 21 MPG!
What a joke, and to demonstrate just what a scam this is, five kids from the shop class at the West Philadelphia High School have built a soybean diesel fuelled car from salvaged parts that goes zero to 60 mph in 4 seconds and gets more than 50 miles per gallon of fuel.
These kids, along with a handful of friends, put the car together after school. And these weren’t especially gifted students, either. In fact, academically speaking they were pretty much from the bottom of the barrel, all were in danger of dropping out and one was even a former gang member.
But this project engaged their minds and emotions, and they have built a car that the so-called finest minds in the automotive industry say they can’t build for the public.
Take a look at the car these kids made from scratch out of recycled parts… not too shabby, eh?
