What's on your mind today?

[Tank]

Interesting.

[billy rubin]

yes.

iceland's almost universal meadows are a human creation.

on the other hand, the desertifiction of north africa is apparently less a human-caused phenomenon and actually a cyclic alternation of wet and dry. forecast to be wet agaion in 15 000 years. i was taught matter of factly that human activities cause the sahara

so the world is complicated

[Icarus]

^ If livestock is, however indirectly, responsible for forest degradation and also responsible for significant amounts of earth warming methane..................Then we had better learn to like veggies more than we like animal flesh.

[billy rubin]

thats fine with me

im vegetarian when i can be and vegan if its possible. have been for 30 years. i hate the stuff.

i have to eat dried meat i thr truck becausr its concentrated and i have no room, but when im home i stay away from it.

[Tank]

To give a service tip started in the coffee shops of London. Customers would put money in a tin marked To Insure Prompt Service = TIPS.

[Asmodean]

not long ago

In this sense, 500 years is a long time, not to mention 1000.

A birch lives for some 100-150 years, so if planted at year zero, 500 years later, every single tree in that forest would have been replaced four-five times over, if not more.

[Icarus]

Our indigenous people thought highly of birch trees. They somehow stripped off the bark, all in one circular piece.  They then fashioned canoes from the birch bark. Great skill with a tomahawk must have been in play.

[billy rubin]

not long ago

In this sense, 500 years is a long time, not to mention 1000.

A birch lives for some 100-150 years, so if planted at year zero, 500 years later, every single tree in that forest would have been replaced four-five times over, if not more.

yes. they could have done it, if their heads had been in that space. but the culture ignored it, and the sheep ate all the shoots. no seeds, no trees. extinct over large parts of the former range.

same thing in california today. the area inland from the san francisco bay was all climax valley oak forests. but the spanish cut almost all the trees down. since then the cattle ate all the shoots until there were no oaks left to re-populate.  so what we have now is large areas of grasslands with a few dispersed oaks, all of which are over three hundred years old. some people are trying to re-grow seedlings, but when the old ones die it will be three hundred years before any get as big as the big ones now in the cut-over areas.








^^^always isolated, old trees, arid grasslands.

 it used to all look like this

[Tank]

Our indigenous people thought highly of birch trees. They somehow stripped off the bark, all in one circular piece.  They then fashioned canoes from the birch bark. Great skill with a tomahawk must have been in play.

[Tom62]

Our balcony on the first floor supposed to be cat-proof. The previous owner had Maine Coons cats as well and installed a cat-proof fence. Zelda, our youngest cat, however saw that as an interesting challenge. Yesterday and she managed to create a small hole at the bottom of the fence for her to crawl through. To our surprise, our neighbour found her in his garden below. Luckily she didn't break any of her bones. I've fixed the hole, but won't let her out again on the balcony when neither my wife or I are present.

[Asmodean]

Back when The Asmo had them ratties, He tried to rat-proof parts of His apartment. Futile effort. They are fast, tiny and have them fingers with which to unscrew things.

[Tank]

The fence around my back garden is being replaced. There have been two odd effects. They can't do the job in one day so the garden was open and we were worried our dog would do a runner. She took one look at the open garden and came straight back in! She does not like no fence! Personally I love there being no fence! It all feels so much more open and inviting.

[Anne D.]

She took one look at the open garden and came straight back in! She does not like no fence!

Very interesting. It reminds me of when we lived in an apartment rather than a house and the cat was always trying to escape out the door. One day he was successful but then just ended up cowering in a corner of the hall yowling. He was quite distressed and did not know what to do with his newfound freedom. For some reason, in the house he's never shown as much interest in escaping.

[billy rubin]

my folks used to have a high fence around their house but the bir iron gate was always open.

the family dachshund would take time off from killing the cobras to bark at people as they walked along the fence outside. when they got to the open gate he would fall silent as they walked past the entrance.

when they got to the fenced part he would race to catch up and then bark at them through the fence again

[Tank]

Animals are amusing.