WAY TO GO WILSONS!

Now that's the way to tour with the family! The RAGBRAI staff hauls all the other gear from stop to stop. It mentions Wilson tinkering to make the tandem into a 4 person bike. Actually, though no small bit of "tinkering" in itself,  he only added the 3rd position to the tandem. The 3rd wheel unit and the Burley trailer attached to same exactly as it would be to any bicycle, are off the shelf items. There must be 2 toddlers in the Burley. We have a 1st generation Burley Trailer that's sat undisturbed in the back corner of our backyard shed for >20 years. I doubt the boys can remember our little jaunts we took with it while their mother worked weekend shifts at Oak Park Hospital's laboratory.  

I remember taking a ride over from Omaha to Crescent IA back in ~1976 to see the start of RAGBRAI. It used to run much nearer Des Moines. I also remember feeling like an old wet "rag" "bro" at the end of my ride. That whole area of Omaha to well past Crescent is just hill after hill after hill, the whole way. 

The 1st R in RAGBRAI = Des Moines Register, the original sole sponsor.

MONOCULTURE: MANKIND'S SUICIDE METHOD?

 

I watched this episode "Silence of The Bees" a few minutes ago on WTTW Prime. Their experts put forth the possible outcome that we'll be left with only foods from wind pollinated plants, mostly grass grains, wheat rye corn etc. should the Bee colony collapse epidemic not be stopped. They understate the result for human existence.
It's ironic that they attribute a share of blame for the CCD events to malnutrition in the bees from monoculture which they are exposed to in our vast areas of 1 crop, typically 1 variety. They realize that the bees REQUIRE greater variety of plants to have normal good health with fully functional immune systems yet they speak as if humanity will have no such threat to survival from depletion of physical health due to loss of food source variety. If we lose food variety we will lose essential nutrients required for survival.

We already know this occurs in poor urban populations due to lack of access to the more expensive foods, being left with access to only the "fast foods", high in carbs and fat but low in all the other nutrients equally essential to anything but POOR HEALTH. For humanity as well as bees, variety is much, much more than just the “Spice of life”. IT IS ESSENTIAL TO LIFE.

The more I think about this pollinating species thing( it goes WAY beyond the honey bees)in my mind it keeps coming back to one HUGE fact of modern agriculture , the UNIVERSALITY of monoculture. Even this total reliance on the honey bees is an aspect of that. Nature will have it's way. Nature ABHORS monoculture and WILL thwart mankind's psychotic insistence on it. These farmers that INSIST on planting every square inch of their hundreds of acres each in a single crop and then must pay beekeepers many thousand of dollars each to place their hives on the fields are blind! They could certainly do much better returning a portion of the land to naturalized fence-rows for natural pollinator habitat. Work with nature rather than trying to BEAT it into submission?

Nature has had thousands of times as long as mankind's existence to develop ways to KICK OUR ASS and most certainly will do so if we don't stop trying to do same to nature.

DO NOT CALL LIST: A TELEMARKETER'S WHO TO CALL LIST

"Congratulations you and your family have been selected for our home security giveaway", sound familiar? This has been repeated multiple times per day for the last 2-3 weeks on our National Do Not Call Registry listed land line phone. Same Text, exactly the same inflection, clearly a recording. I did a quick check (incomplete read) o...f the law related and it appeared to prohibit telemarketing calls beginning with a recording no matter whether the call recipient is on the Do Not Call List or not.
It would appear we need existing laws better enforced more than we need new laws!

 You can quickly register a phone # on the list, check if yours is registered or file a complaint about a violation on this page. I registered a complaint (offending #=406-351-4352, thanks to caller ID) this afternoon, checked our phones for listing, found my cell # wasn't listed and corrected same.  

Does anyone have an account with a reverse search provider? I'd like to know who was placing the call so the FCC can have the name to attach to the complaint and publish it as much as possible to hopefully embarrass the offender and warn consumers away from this LAW BREAKER. I tried calling the # but there's no connection to any real human being, just another recording referring callers to dial 1 to be added to their corporate Do Not Call list. Yeah, right, like that'd ever happen! Here's another Do Not Call consumer asset.