Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello: Casca Comment

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Casca Comment

Great Moments in Comments

“

Dammit, I just had to listen to the blithering cashier at the grocery store spout the party line on plastic bags learned from her daughter, who learned it from her science teacher. According to those in the bottom thirty percent of graduating classes who move on to become teachers, the number code on the plastic container is the number of millions of years it takes for the container to biodegrade. F**k her, I doublebagged. - CASCA

”

Rodger the Real King of France 4/26/2007 07:14:00 AM 15 Comments

"If the number of Islamic terror attacks continues at the current rate, candlelight vigils will soon be the number-one cause of global warming. "
Argus Hamilton

15 comments:

Anonymous said...: So would they prefer we cut down trees to make paper bags? Fine by me! I hate those flimsy bags that make you have to double/triple bag!

TFV; 4/26/07, 7:33 AM
Rodger the Real King of France said...: I love them. They make it possible to carry $200 worth of groceries in from the car at a time. Plus, the bags make handy salad mixers, trash liners and poop picker-uppers.; 4/26/07, 9:23 AM
Anonymous said...: Funny you should mention this. At my local mega-supermarket, they have alcohol wipes at the entrance one may use to wipe the germs off the shopping cart handles. Some nitwit employee was telling a customer "You shouldn't use those... germs will build up antibiotic resisitance [nevermind there were no antibiotics involved] and harm everyone as a result".

I walked over and took about four and dramatically wiped my arms up to the elbow.

Nitwits. Makes me wonder if she uses soap. Same thing.

And I always get paper bags. They actually stand upright don't dump my shit all over the trunk.
--Jack; 4/26/07, 9:44 AM
Jake said...: Filled in landfills are completely lined with clay both top and bottom so that the contents will not leak out. Thus, they are almost air and water tight.

Researchers from the University of Arizona have dug up old land fills and found that the clay linings are very effective. Virtually none of the garbage changes at all. They could read 40 year old newspapers proving that nothing is biodegradable.

So plastic bags are the most environmentally friendly because they take up far less space than a paper bag.; 4/26/07, 11:09 AM
Anonymous said...: Back when I worked at the Piggly Wiggly in high school, bagging groceries was an art form. There were rules about what kind of crap got bagged together and what wasn't supposed to be bagged together. After a while, we got to know who wanted light bags and who could tolerate heavy bags, and it was a point of pride to bag a paper bag to the top with sundry groceries.

That was back when paper bags were substantial, and when we had those little shiny bags for 1/2 gallons of ice cream. Now, I go buy $150 worth of groceries and the lobotomized maroons at the Winn-Dixie put two items in every plastic bag, regardless of the weight or volume.

Jake, almost everything's biodegradeable, when exposed to the elements. Modern landfills are responsible for preserving unnecessary volumes of refuse. I used to live out in the middle of Texas and collected bottles. Poking around 50+ year old dumps, it was unusual to find more than glass, carbon rods from batteries, and large chunks of metal. Modern environmentalism is just simple-mindedness from intellectual poseurs.

skh.pcola; 4/26/07, 11:44 AM
Anonymous said...: Half a dozen or so years ago, I experimented with what I call "smother" material; that is, things you lay under shrubs 'n stuff to inhibit weed growth. Divided the work up into about 8 sections:

one was a single layer of flattened paper Navy commissary grocery bags

two was spread and flattened newsprint of 6-page thickness

three was flattened plastic Navy Commissary bags (not cut open for single layer)

four was 4- to 5-inch deep pine straw

five was flattened, single-layer cardboard boxes

six was Hefty 35-gal lawn trash bags cut open to make a single layer

seven was mixed oak, maple, magnolia, bay, and other leaves to about 5-inch depth

eight was pebbles covered with pine bark

This is in Pensacola, BTW, and each section got about the same water and sun. Four years later the newspaper was completely gone; the cardboard was in the last stages of total disintegration; the paper bags were gone except for a few patches here and there; the Commissary bags were barely recognizable as such (except for the handles, which were still fairly intact, but flaky; the Hefty bags were still there, recognizable, but irretrievable except in fragile little swatches; the pine straw was still there, but only around an inch or so deep; the leaves were, for want of a better term, smushy and nasty; and the gravel with pine bark was pretty much as it was when I put it there except that the birds like to get into the bark and toss it around lookin for lunch.

Placed in active soil supporting vegetation and getting decent rain and sunlight, seems to me that most man-made packaging stuff except concrete, rubber, and stainless steel tend to return to the soil whence they came. Even styrofoam tends to get flaky and discombobulate in soil under a bush; takes a long time, but it finally goes away (coffee cups).

I also buried 3 old blades from lawn mowers -- a mulcher, a shredder, and a flailer (dethatcher) along with some paperback books about 10 years ago just to see what'd happen. Books are still there (about 18 inches deep) but by all means unusable (decomposing nicely on all exposed sides); iron blades are badly rusted, probably about half gone in terms of base metal remaining. I can't find the discarded blade from the bow saw that I put in the same hole.

Best smother material? Rubber mats from old junk cars. Picked up a shitload of 'em one time . . . work like a champ for keepin weeds out, but they also keep water from gettin down to the roots inside the drip-line perimeter. Finally got rid of the ugly things and let everything go back to nat'r'al.

Landfills are nothin but enormous time capsules, 'specially north of the Mason-Dixon line.; 4/26/07, 1:05 PM
Anonymous said...: eros, I'm in Milton (spent the last of my formative years here after my dad picked Whiting as his twilight tour to round out 30 years in the USN, after 5 years in Key West), but I lived in Pensacola until about 6 months ago. I've always liked this area.

skh.pcola; 4/26/07, 2:07 PM
Anonymous said...: I retired from USN in 84 and came here with 3 of my kids in the last of their formative years. One of 'em played football with Emmitt Smith at EHS here in P'cola.

'Course they all ran off in various directions and made incredibly poor mate selections after we got here, sayin the place is dull with nothin to do. Problem is that they went to places with lotsa stuff to do, but never do any of it.

I came here 'cause it's relatively inexpensive and I coulda lived on my retirement pay had I wanted to. Wife's still pissed that we didn't settle in SoCal.; 4/26/07, 2:45 PM
Anonymous said...: Reminds me of what I once heard of recycling: Why do it? Let them take everything to the dump, and if ever an item becomes economically viable, just mine the dump. Voila, it's all there. Cans come to mind, but who knows what they'll want in the future.; 4/26/07, 7:02 PM
skh.pcola said...: alear: totally agree.

eros: I graduated HS in '83, left immediately because, as you pointed out, "there was nothing to do." Now that I'm middle-aged, having nothing to do ain't such a bad thing. Wages suck for a job seeker, though. I graduate either this summer or this December (summer for econ major/finance minor, Dec for majors in both), and the job market locally is not reassuring.

Anyway, it's neat to meet somebody from the hometown on Rodger's board.; 4/26/07, 8:09 PM
Anonymous said...: Good grief. Does everyone on this site live in Pensacola? I've been here for 10 years now and it seems like everyone I meet has some tie here. Hell, half the folks over at du Toit's place are from here, too. There's something to be said about a strong military town and our conservative leanings...; 4/26/07, 10:21 PM
Anonymous said...: How close is Pensacola to Gulf Breeze?; 4/27/07, 3:58 AM
Anonymous said...: Go downtown P'cola to the water's edge, follow it east a few hundred yards, cross a bridge, and you're downtown Gulf Breeze.; 4/27/07, 7:33 AM
Anonymous said...: Well, you guys are close to some of my kin then.; 4/27/07, 9:35 AM
skh.pcola said...: This is crazy. I've been on the intertubes for 12 years and have never frequented a forum with this many people from my hometown. Hell, back when I was a FReeper and lived in Cincinnati, I only knew 1 other person from there. I do have a good friend in Pcola that I met on KnifeForums.com, though.

Cool. It's good to know that I share something in common with other like-minded folks, other than a propensity for loathing progressive scum.; 4/27/07, 12:24 PM

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Casca Comment

Great Moments in Comments

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