The argument is made that if cattle, for example, are no longer able to feel pain, perhaps there will be less ethical delimas related to factory-farming practices. (Think your meat purchases come from smaller farmers? “In the U.S., four companies produce 81 percent of cows, 73 percent of sheep, 57 percent of pigs and 50 percent of chickens.”) I would argue that even though one could eliminate the ability for an animal to feel pain, it does not mean that the animal should be treated in an inhumane way. This solution also does not address the significant impact factory farming has on the environment.

For some reason, we people tend to ignore pain and suffering by any organism that cannot speak for itself. Abortions are conducted where the only voice acknowledged is the voice of the mother; yet we know that a fetus can feel pain at least by 20 weeks. Even if you don’t buy the abortion argument, circumcision is something performed on infant males widely throughout the United States. However, rarely is any pain management used with infants due to the concerns this may have on development. Yet the idea of an adult male being circumcised without managing the pain seems torturous. Tests have been conducted to objectively measure a baby’s response to circumcision verses other early medical procedures. These tests indicate that infants do indeed feel a significant level of pain during this procedure. We debeak chickens and we cut the tails off of dogs, sheep, and other animals. We declaw cats. I’m sure there are other examples. Yet, we only perform these actions on animals/infants that cannot speak to the pain they are in.

Perhaps I am going off on a tangent. And, true, one could argue that genetically altering the livestock to feel less pain would take away some of the complaints. However, one must also consider the drawbacks. First, and foremost, how will not feeling pain affect an animal’s natural ability to learn from and avoid dangerous situations? Will there be pigs chewing their own legs out of boredom and no pain signals to tell them to stop? Will cows run through barbed wire without concern for being cut? There is actually a precedent. A family had six children who could not feel pain. A blessing in disguise? Not so. When the story was run, they had multiple injuries and one had accidentally killed himself by jumping from a roof. A real question that must be considered is, “what are the ramifications from such a genetic mutation?” Also, “what effect will this have on the human consumers of this mutated meat?”

Perhaps this idea of removing pain from animals will be a non-starter. I hope so. But it completely falls in line with other solutions the agricultural industry has created to address problems with factory-farming:

• Problem: Consumption of meat has increased dramatically with less available land and people raising animals.
• Solution: Crowd animals into small cages and process and butcher them as quickly as possible.
• Problem: Due to crowding, chickens are more aggressive and cannibalistic.
• Solution: Debeak the chickens to reduce mortality and damage to other birds.
• Problem: Piglets suck milk from the mother far too long before fattening them up for slaughter, affecting bottom line.
• Solution: Remove piglets from mother sooner and begin feeding solid food to increase growth.
• Problem: Pigs suck and chew on tails of other pigs because they were removed from sucking on the mother too soon.
• Solution Dock the tails of the pigs to keep them from chewing on each other.
• Problem: Animals are becoming sick due to the overcrowding.
• Solution: Pump them full of antibiotics.

So, the new problem and solution: Animals are experiencing discomfort and pain due to overcrowding, lack of effective care, and lack of supervision of slaughtering procedures. Solution? Genetically alter them to not experience pain!

Secret of Lint

Considering that most spam is sent by bots and not by real people, a few non-standardized changes should help out tremendously.  So if you want to send me an email through the contact form, make sure you follow the directions.  There are two checkboxes, one checked, one not checked.  It’s not likely a bot will uncheck one and check the other, but that’s the only way for valid mail to get to me.

P.S. Yes, the contact form does work, so there is no need to send me a “does this work?” message!

Floor after one gallon of adhesive remover

As you can tell, the remover works exceptionally well.  However, i missed the edges and in some areas the leftover pad and adhesive was too thick to remove with one coat.

Floor after three gallons of adhesive remover

This is 75 bucks worth of clean.  You can’t see the whole room from this picture, but it is pretty large.  It is about 180 square feet.  So if I get one more gallon, I can brush it onto the areas that were previously missed and hopefully be left with a concrete-only floor.

The guy who has been working on the ceiling and walls has finished his work as well.  I plan to (along with my mom and sister) get the priming done today so that it will be ready for painting.  I have guitar practice on Tuesday and youth on Wednesday, so I’m hoping to get the painting done by Thursday/Friday.  Which will mean the tiling can start this weekend!  It’s going to be cutting it close… but hopefully it will all be done before Christmas dinner.

This year is no exception.  Several years back, my parents’ had the foundation of the house propped up.  In the dining room, the ceiling had a severe crack that caused a whole section of sheetrock to hang down an inch.  There were also several cracks in the walls.  And the floor felt like it was crumbling beneath your feet.  Well, my mom decides it’s time to fix the room.  So she hires a guy to rehang the drywall, patch the cracks in the walls, and remove some really old and peeling wallpaper.  To do all this, everything had to be removed from the room.  This meant it was a prime time to also re-do the floor.

So I pulled up the 30 year old carpet, and was greeted with a carpet pad that was completely glued to the concrete floor.

Removing the Old Carpet

You can see from the picture (besides my dorkiness) in the background is some parts of the pad that stuck to the concrete.  The black area on the other side of the roll of carpet is the pad that didn’t come up on that end of the room.

I used a long-handled scraper to remove large chunks of the stuck on pad, but the adhesive was very difficult to remove.  So I purchased some adhesive remover which works fantastically.  I’ve used one gallon and I will need to use two more.  I plan to do that on Saturday or Sunday, to hopefully have a clean concrete floor ready for tiling by early next week.

In the meantime, we still have to wait on the guy to finish his work. Then we will need to paint the room.  So far, we have not even pulled out any Christmas stuff because there is no room in the other areas of the house to put it since all the dining room stuff is currently out.  When my brother and sister-in-law come in from DC, hopefully we will have things done (or close to it).

Anyway, things have been stressful lately, but doing something that just requires physical labor is helpful to make me feel productive and get my mind off other things.  I’ll post again when I have a picture of the floor completely cleaned.

On Friday night the temperature was around the mid-twenties. I pitched my tarp low to the ground and with one side flat to try to minimize any wind. Thankfully, there was very little wind. We stayed at the Shady Lake campground the first night. My feet got extremely cold during the night, but, otherwise, I was fairly warm.

In my continual quest for going lighter when backpacking, I was trying out some new ideas for me to keep warm. My clothing consisted of: wool-blend socks, trail running shoes, mesh-lined nylon wind pants and quick-drying synthetic underwear. On top, I wore a quick-drying synthetic long-sleeve shirt and a wool sweater. I brought a wind/rain jacket made out of tyvek (a hazardous materials suit with the legs cut off). It worked surprisingly well in the wind. I also had a pair of cheap cotton gloves and a cheap wal-mart synthetic cap.

On Saturday we got moving on the trail. We planned to cover 4.3 miles the first day (hike the Buckeye until it intersected with Caney Creek trail). The temperature was supposed to be in the 40’s, but it never got above around 32-33, so we decided to hike out the remainder of the trail (3.9 miles) on Saturday so we could all be in a warm bed that night.

Trailhead

At the trailhead. It was sooo cold when we started especially because the wind had started blowing. We did not spend much time here before getting a move on so that we could warm up. I know I look like a fool. But this picture does show my new favorite component of my backpacking equipment: my trekking poles.

Tyvek Wind/Rain Jacket

Here’s a picture David took of me in my rain/wind jacket. It cost me all of 4 bucks and worked really well in the wind. It’s not very stylish, but I was pleased with the performance.

Rock

David's Head

Frozen Plant

Katy Falls

Elizabeth, Mike, and Me at an Overlook

Overlook

David and Elizabeth

This final picture is by far my favorite shot. This was taken by David. I think this shot is what makes me want to give this trail one more chance. I just know that if we ever go on a clear sunny day, the views will be breathtaking.

Nice Shot

Sometimes, life sucks. Last week was an extremely stressful week. I had all kinds of family problems and relationship problems. This week, the family problems have gotten worse. Left my parents house extremely upset tonight. Just sent my mother an email that wasn’t “ugly,” but was pretty forceful about some things. I’ll probably regret sending it later.

Oh well. It’s times like these I’m glad that time just keeps marching on…

Here are some pictures:

Backbone Trail - Kisatchie National Forest

This is a picture I took early on the first day. Luke was really excited and ready to go. The trail itself was unusual in that the trail in areas was very sandy and lots of rock outcrops existed. I don’t know of many places in Louisiana that would look like that. There were also tons of Longleaf Pine trees, which were a nice treat. They have extremely long needles and huge pine cones.

Crooked Tree

I thought it this tree looked exceptionally unusual. I think it speaks to the determination of life; even if one is deformed or may have limitations, striving for that life-giving sunlight continues on.

New Best Friend

Luke walked right past (perhaps right on top of) this Water Moccasin. This snake was truly pissed. I wish I had recorded video to show just how loud it was hissing. It was sucking in air and hissing it out so forcefully, you could see it’s head change shape with it. A truly amazing encounter. It was frightening as well, because Luke had passed it and I had no easy way around. Luke was going to walk right back to me (over the snake) and probably get bitten. So I had to holler at him to go away and stop many times as I hacked my way through some thorns to get around the snake (it was so angry I did NOT want to attempt to move it off trail with a stick).

After covering a bunch of miles, it was nice to reach camp. This was the view from camp that evening. I was looking out to the East, so I knew I would have a spectacular view in the morning.

Can You Spot the Lizard?

This little guy was really curious. As I was resting at camp, he came down the tree and watched me for several minutes. He even came off the tree to come closer to me, but I moved and he quickly went back up again. But he continued to watch me until I went to do other things.

Good Morning Sunshine

Here’s what my morning looked like. Absolutely gorgeous. You don’t get to see many sunrises like this in a lifetime. After taking a few shots and absorbing the morning for a bit, it was time to move on to find water and get back home.

This is the water source. It was a pretty clear-running stream, despite the look of it. Luke had a great time splashing around, running up and down the sand “beach,” and throwing splashes of water and sand all over me.

Pretty soon I was off the trail, and it was time to head home. I did meet a road traveler about a minute after leaving the trailhead parking lot. He was moving pretty fast, like he had somewhere to be. And, so did I, so I left him and went on home.

So, check it out.  Be sure to view it as a slideshow as well to see stunning pictures.

One cool thing that happened this week is a coworker and friend gave me some “yard eggs.”  I had never heard of these before.  Well, she grew up on “the riverbanks” and we joke all the time about her country words and phrases.  This is another one, that means that the eggs come from chickens in the yard.  Her sister raises chickens (and I hope to get a couple from her at some point).  So, she gave me a dozen yard eggs.  I am going to feel ok eating these eggs.

yard-eggs