Who are the real job creators?

The Phactor was still on his first cup of coffee when Nate showed up to begin work on a combination stone/wood-henge pergola.  It stands a bit behind the lily pond that we filled with money during its renovation last summer.  And an college student seeking summer work of the strong back/weak mind sort just finished spreading ten or so cubic yards of mulch around our various gardens.  Earlier the balcony off one of our bedrooms was refurbished so it is no longer dangerous to life and limb to sit our there.  In re-landscaping the pond area, the local garden shops have done very well.  Across the street a neighbor had his roof redone, and along with our neighbors some 200+ feet of good-neighbor wooden fencing will shortly be replaced. And the list goes on and on as not a day goes by that one or more tradesman trucks is parked on our block.  Yes, folks.  We're the job creators, or if not actually creators, the money from old house owners and gardeners is the life blood for all these businesses, oh, except for ChemicalLawn.  They don't get a penny.  Too bad the government doesn't get this.  The middle class drives the economy of this country, and yet the aim seems to be to diminish their ability to consume.  In the meantime corporations are sitting on top of record amounts of cash and are they building any pergolas or lily ponds?  No!  Their money is just being wasted by being money.  Maybe like Scrooge McDuck they just like sitting there and looking at it.  The Phactor prefers waterlilies.  

The Cost of Environmental Regulations

By now the anti-environmental mantra of the GnOPers is well known to all in the USA where conservative has nothing whatever to do with conservation. Duh! Other than thinking that safe guarding the environment is a good thing, the Phactor, like most other people is unable to judge fairly whether such regulations, onerous as they may be, are hurting industries, the economy, and costing us jobs. Dealing with waste and emissions certainly costs companies, although the idea that environmental degredation is an OK business practice results in another cost subsididzed by the environment and everything else that uses it and needs it. The current crop of GnOPe presidential hopefuls have made it pretty clear that they think EPA rules and regs hurt the USA's economy. Without being overly cynical, if such a thing is possible these days when speaking of politics, it strikes this thinking person that like most of their other positions this is simple-minded thinking, or campaign rhetoric, or most likely both, as no towering intellect has been demonstrated among them. After all if new regulations require new technology, somebody gets employed to design it, make it, install it, and maintain it. The money it costs industry A to safe guard the environment doesn't just disappear, it goes to industry B, C, D, and E, generating jobs in the process. So it comes as no surprise really when people who understand these things better agree with my basic understanding of the issue.

Why plants and rainforest stuff, not politics?

A reader asks why the Phactor has made no comments about recent political events and instead rambles on about his tomatoes and rainforest organisms? Well, it’s fairly simple. The Phactor is so disgusted, so annoyed, so angry, so outraged that he will go ballistic if he starts thinking and writing about this topic at all. After all when you’ve been accosted, however nicely, by an upset shopkeeper in a small butcher shop in a beach community of far northern Queensland who’s worried about the impact of the USA’s stupid politics will have on global economics, well, you know there is a lesson to be learned and it’s pretty simple: rigid ideology of any sort is no way to govern. The butcher had decided that while his business was doing well, he wasn't going to risk a good thing by buying and opening another shop in a 2nd location until the world economy of which the USA is a lynch pin settles down. If a butcher thinks like this half way around the world, why is anyone surprised that the economy and the job picture have not improved. Our politicians, and therefore, the USA are not instilling confidence because of how they behave. The common good does not matter at all, either on a national or international level, just ideological purity. Fundamentalism either in politics or religion does not lead to thinking about consequences. Yours truly hopes that everything does not have to implode for people to learn that electing political ideologues is not a good thing, ever, of any persuasion. To all you good people of the world, let me apologize for our actions, for the stupidity of the electorate and the elected. Oops, blood pressure monitor, that bulging vein on my temple, says this is not good for my wa. Even a tomato-thieving varmint has a calming influence in comparison.

Just getting by in hard times

My heart goes out to people suffering in these hard times. I'm so fortunate to be largely isolated from the economic down turn. Living well within your means buffers you from hard times. Hardly a day goes by without some sad report of people in financial trouble. And as the hard times spread it touches everyone. But I can barely stand to read about some of these stories. I just don't know how they manage! Scraping by on $500,000 a year is just so difficult even under normal conditions, but when the economy turns south, well, things get really tough.

And here you thought you had it bad. Well, this just shows you how difficult things are for people all over.

Can you imagine the hardship of having to wear the same designer gown to two different functions! Can you imagine having to send your kids to a public school? Or, having to fire the nanny or housekeeper and discovering that dishes and kids do not clean themselves? And, just think about (oh, the horror of it all is almost too much for decent people to bear) having to use public transportation!

Their sense of entitlement boggles the imagination. Or maybe us mere peasants just don't understand our society's aristocracy. Most certainly our economic aristocrats don't understand the pain and suffering of real people. Anyone for a piece of cake?

Hat tip to the F1 for sending me the link to this article.

2008's Botanical Geek Tour

The question was how best to stimulate the economy with those tax rebates provided by the USA? Well, our idea was to organize a 2nd botanical geek tour whose purpose is to visit botanical gardens and other places of botanical interest, and along the way to eat and drink well. So we stimulated the economy by travelling to London for a long weekend in late May to visit the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew, the Chelsea Flower Show, and the Chelsea Physic Garden. You might argue that this did little to stimulate the USA's economy, but this is an international form of the trickle down effect, so I'm sure the USA understands if the impact is a bit indirect.

Kew Gardens were not disappointing, although I have visited other more attractive gardens, but few with such grand vistas. Here is the largest, oldest Victorian glasshouse still in use, and the collection it houses is quite impressive. One of the cycads inside is probably the oldest potted plant in the world. The plant in the foreground is Gunnera, which is a basal lineage of the true dicots, and it's sort of strange seeing it so far from its Central and South American rainforest home.

The Chelsea flower show was quite amazing, the displays quite often provoking the question, "how did they do that?" However, although the daily attendance is capped, the crowds were equally amazing. Still all other garden/flower shows pale by comparison. My favorite was a small garden where everything, roof, walls, table, etc. were covered in moss.

The Chelsea physic garden is rather small and tucked away in a corner, but they have over 4000 labelled species arranged both medically and taxonomically in its 4 acres. The garden has been around for over 350 years, but has only been open to the public in recent decades.

Now you can get a bit foot-sore and tired with so much tramping about in the name of botanical edification, and the remedy for that is to sit yourself down at a local pub for a bit of refreshment. The Coach & Horses is right outside the main gate to Kew Gardens and it came recommended by a British colleague. A fine pub but this is as close to botany as he ever got. I wish I knew why pubs in Britain have so much more atmosphere than most bars in the USA, which seem fixated on the number of TVs screens they can cram in.

The next botanical geek tour may take us to Sweden, the home of Linnaeus. But it will have to wait until the next stimulus check appears, or when Lincolnland comes across with a decent pay raise, or hell freezes over.

Global Warming and Wine

First off, I disagree with the premise that wine is an unnecessary luxury. Wine is a basic food group 0f the civilized person and must be included in at least one meal a day.

Now in case you happen to be completely ignorant about crops and climates, wine grapes is a crop associated with Mediterranean climates, which range from cool to hot, but basically they have cool, relatively mild, wet winters and relatively hot, dry summers. Different grape varieties do better at various points along that climatic gradient. In a bit of climatic irony, the Mediterranean area does not have a monopoly on Mediterranean climates, which are also found on the west coast of North America, in California, Oregon, and to some extent in Washington, in South Africa, in Australia, and in Argentina and Chile, just look at the latitudes on a globe. So it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out where all that wine comes from.

Global warming is certainly a concern, but by affecting wine, it’s getting serious. Climatic change associated with global warming may ruin Australia’s interior wine growing regions by increasing aridity, more and greater drought. Now granted this region does not provide the most distinguished wine, and elsewhere climatic shifts may have given some of France’s wine producing regions warmer, wetter summers and a fabulous 2005 vintage, but day to day, many of us don’t drink vintage year French wines. So this is getting serious.

Yes, without a little Long Flat Red to sip as you tend the Barbie (grill, not girl), you begin to wonder if life is worth living.

But similar shifts in climate are what will not just damage, but wholesale ruin many agricultural areas. And the Land of Lincoln is not immune from this. The maize and soybean desert will become more of a desert, a drier region, one that is too dry for its two main crops. Presently the USA produces about 70% of the world’s soybeans in a narrow latitudinal band. If soybeans are raised any further south, they do not get long enough nights to trigger flowering; and if try to raise them further north, then the growing season is too short for the fruits and seeds to mature after flowering takes place in late summer (longer nights). No need to mention that soybeans are the USA’s #1 agricultural export and their value is huge. And indeed, this commodity threatened by climate change, yet the scientific dummies running things still act as if this isn’t a serious problem.

Why it’s enough to make a guy drink. Pass the Hermitage Côtes du Rhône 2005 please. No time to waste on cheap wine.