Usually, I take a cue from some newspaper or web article citing someone or other with some profound or ridiculous comment, but it turns out we have our own profound QOTW right here at WUWT.
In the thread: What really goes on at COP16 in Cancun
steven hoffer says:
Start the burner under that smoke stack, dam that river, bridge that gap. push back the night. You might wonder why these fools are trying to let the outdoors back in, when we’ve spent our entire history trying to keep the outdoors out.
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Is there really a law that forbids too many Home grown vegetables? or did someone get their watermelons mixed up.. Eeek!!
Reminds me of how we used to break our backs to fill in malarial swamps, but today we preserve them as wetlands and cry about how AGW is bringing malaria back to northern climes.
steven hoffer says: … when we’ve spent our entire history trying to keep the outdoors out.
Sweet! and very perceptive, Stephen. Nice balance of wry humour and philosophic truth and reality.
I’ll endorse this entire comment without a quibble. Anyone can be an editor; but in this instance not me.
A worthy QOTW; to be held as an entry in the Quote of the Year stakes.
When I turned on my internet today, I found it MOST disconcerting to discover my own name located in one of the posts. Something along the lines of : “OH NO! AM I IN TROUBLE???”
Engchamp says:
December 1, 2010 at 12:22 pm
“Steven… ” Start the burner under that smoke stack, dam that river, bridge that gap. push back the night.”
Are those your words, or am I missing out on an American writer/poet?”
those are my own words. HOWEVER, I am definatly not the first person to express a thought along those lines. I would imagine that any number of prominant figures from the 19th century could of said something similar.
It was the use of fire that helped man seperate himself from animals.
Use of fire kept us safe from predators and extended our days, giving us time to ponder and reflect, i.e. excercise the mind. As with excercising the body, excercising the mind helped develop it, hence here we are.
Long live fire, the burning of carbon.
Nice introspection, Mr. Hoffer. It made me think–a lot.
TheTempestSpark says:
December 1, 2010 at 5:18 pm
As I understand it, effectively, yes in the USA as of 29th Nov. Could be wrong as I’ve not looked too closely. Also as I understand it Monsanto was something of a sponsor to the bill
DaveE.
@David A. Evans and TempestSpark:
The Senate in the USA passed a ‘Farm Safety Bill’ that does some rather bad stuff and does not distinguish between a home garden and Monsanto… but it still has to pass the House and President before it can become law…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/grow-a-tomato-go-to-prison/
The major “risk” is that it effectively would treat home heirloom seed savers just like major businesses. Oh, and any “records” you have that the government cares to look at must be made available. And you could have site inspections. Oh, and it’s handled by Homeland Security, the folks who brought you TSA “Pat Downs”… so when they get tired of patting your “melons” they can come “pat your tomatoes”…
I hope it dies on the vine 😉
steven hoffer says:
December 1, 2010 at 8:04 pm
1st. It’s definitely
2nd Could of is could’ve or could have
3rd I’m just pissed off that I didn’t think of the statement that made QOTW
DaveE.
Australia is a rather benign wilderness compared with the US and many other parts of the world but 60 years ago an aboriginal in the far west said to me that the best things he ever got from a white man was a shirt and a swag [blanket roll].
As a naked man sleeping on the ground he had to coat himself with a wood ash paste to keep parasites and cold at bay.
David A. Evans;
3rd I’m just pissed off that I didn’t think of the statement that made QOTW>>
You? How do you think I feel? Dozens, perhaps hundreds of posts that I’ve written on this blog and my bratt kid who can’t even spell tosses off the QOTW and then worries about getting in trouble. Oh wait. I can’t spell either. Probably inherited that from me. Loud mouth snert… me again.
Proud of ya kid. Learned to think for yourself, and have the guts to say it too. Nicely worded.
Ya, but guys… Nature may be a cruel mistress, but she also evolved us, births us, feeds us, and provides us with all the nifty things we need to make almost whatever we want. Including spaceships, submarines, skyscrapers, and this handy little thing we call the internet and access thru our handy little computers. All this when its not killing us. {VBG}
So I’ll take nature over no nature. Without it, where would we be? (hint, we wouldn’t exist at all).
I want to say thanks to Anthony, for picking my quote for the QOTW.
… and to dad and the other posters who liked it, and also those who critiqued my spelling and grammar, even though you will never convince me to change 😛
R. de Haan said on December 1, 2010 at 1:19 pm:
Say what?
Well, you can finally get something green, natural, and Obama, namely the Obama Chia
PetPlanter. Yes, now anyone can have the joy of making the first black American president grow a green afro. Amazon has it, for some reason it’s in the “Health & Personal Care” department, maybe because the greenery will produce healthy oxygen but also maybe because it’ll make people laugh and relax. As seen in the listing, it comes in two facial poses, Determined and Inhaling.It may also be made by aliens. The US government will neither confirm nor deny this at this time, of course.
Well, Steven Hoffer, you might well have been in trouble had Anthony Watts not left out that part about a “hobo”. Not every people living in the gutter do so by choice.
I know at least one person, a friend who ended up a “hobo”. He was a law student and one of the most intelligent guys I met in my life. I was absolutely certain that this brilliant and exceptionally mature 19 year-old was destined to become a powerful public figure in the future. By the age of 22 he had developed the full spectrum of mental disorders finding himself in and out of mental institutions. When I saw him again at 26 years of age, he was homeless sleeping in the streets and barely recognisable.
So, if you can’t spare a dime, spare a thought.
I wonder if Steven Hoffer would like to travel up to ANWR during summer wearing no more than shorts and a t-shirt. He might be advised that mosquitoes extract 1 pint of blood out of cariboues in one day. That’s why we can’t extract oil there because these are ‘delicate’ animals. In fact some of these animals literally go nuts because there’s no way to escape the onslaught of the mosquitoes. Having worked on a farm in the great outdoors I can be sympathetic having had a back covered with welts that I dare not scratch. And in my current state, with a progressive & terminal respiratory condition he will tear that AC out of my cold dead hands.
re post by sHx says: December 1, 2010 at 10:52 pm
FWIW, I didn’t see the original quote with hobo in it. It used to be, at least in the USA, that a hobo referred to a migrant worker, or sometimes a person who traveled from town to town without a permanent job or home but who was willing, able, and wanted to work to support themselves as they traveled. It was a common term in the Depression. Hobo’s weren’t the same as a ‘tramp’ which referred to vagabonds or those who traveled but weren’t willing to work. Street people or the homeless or bums are terms we’re all familiar with, and I gather unfortunately all too often mental illness is involved (well, maybe not for homeless people which may be a temporary poverty issue, but the term is often used to refer to those living on the streets by choice too). I gather from a quick check online that these terms have become a little more interchangeable recently, but hobo is still primarily associated with migrant workers.
“If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong”
Royal sociesty christmas lecture – saw it last night, seems Professor Brian Cox doesn’t quite get it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wfnqg
Royal sociesty christmas lecture
Royal sociesty christmas lecture – Wrong
Royal television society lecture
The full original post in “What really goes on at COP16 in Cancun” which produced the quote is somewhat grittier than the extract, but worth reading to add colour to David’s boy, Steven. And the quote stands in my mind as a classic.
Re- “Start the burner under that smoke stack, dam that river, bridge that gap. push back the night. You might wonder why these fools are trying to let the outdoors back in, when we’ve spent our entire history trying to keep the outdoors out.”
_____________
First Letter Code = Stbutss, dtr, btg. Ymwwtfattltobi, wwvsoehttktoo.
Decoded Message = Big O to sponsor WUWT. Grant 20 years $1,210,000,000.00
I think he works for come Big Oil Company who wants to sponsor WUWT with a $1.21B grant over the next 20 years. But I’m a little rusty on DickTracyCode, and it may be $1.21B per year for 20 years, and it may just be a bunch of stupid letters.
I’ve always loved the outdoors, as an avid camper/backpacker in Northern CA and as a surfer in Southern CA & HI.
My view has always been that Nature/Universe was somehow predatory at its core, in a fundemental and benevolent way. I agree with the above post (paraphrased)that ‘we wouldn’t be what/who/where we are’ if it wasn’t.
Good thing too, if these green-eco (greco’s?) yahhoo’s, that Steve refers to in his most excellent quote, had landed at Plymouth we wouldn’t have made it past Boston.
Ooops: last sentence, 2nd para strike the second ‘wouldn’t’. Mod help please? Back to the java…
[I did help. 🙂 …bl57~mod]
Thanks :0)