[sunhawk]

Oh oh I will try to make it!! 😀 It’s close to my birthday, I just have to ask my family when they are planning our family get-together, which we like to do because it’s also my dad’s birthday on my birthday ^_^ But meeting up would be AWESOME! 😀

[sunhawk]

Skylover wrote:

Greater Basilisk wrote:

😮 How can anyone confuse FInland with Colorado? XD

There were two packages – one going to Finland, one going to Colorado. The Canadian post office switched the customs labels. It wasn’t Ellen’s fault, but she kindly paid to have the packages reshipped. You would think that somewhere along the line they would have noticed that there were two distinct address on the packages, but they didn’t.

I heard about that one! LOL I was confused myself how no one noticed!

Man I have to stop disappearing for long periods of time, I miss this forum!

[sunhawk]

dark_zorse wrote:

My stance on solar is that it is a god technology, but must be integrated accordingly. Eating up vast acreage with solar panels isn’t my idea of heaven. When integrated properly – that is, perched on a roof, or an otherwise innocuous space that isn’t doing anything, they work and work well. There are solar panels going to be installed on the roof of my stable to help keep the PG&E bills down.

sunhawk wrote:

dark_zorse wrote:

Example 2. Pesticides. Here’s a biggie most green organizations don’t want you to know. Most pesticides and chemicals – including DDT – (oh! End of the world! DDT!) are safe so long as you use them as they are SUPPOSED to be used. In other words… you do not go out and DUMP millions upon MILLIONS of gallons into fields, lakes, and streams. Few folks know DDT was the sole reason why malaria never became a problem in the United States.

This is true to a degree, but it’s also true that even if people use pesticides to the amounts they are supposed to, they still end up in waterways and they still build up in the fatty tissue of animals. It takes longer if people use less, but it’ll still kill animals, including people on rare occasion. It’s a poison, that’s what it’s meant to do. That’s why it affects birds so badly, because of the exponential leveling up of poisoning amounts due to the insects and other small animals they eat that already have their own dose of poison, as if the prey were little storage boxes of pesticide. So yeah it won’t poison you, the person putting it on your plants, but it’s still dangerous because of how it persists in the natural world. That’s my problem with it, more so than the harm to me personally. I can be aware of the risk and take precautions to protect myself, but animals can’t.

Aha, I was waiting for someone to bring up trophic accumulation.

This I will not deny is true. And it is not the chemical itself causing the problem, it is what the chemical breaks down into over time. That is, a chemical that mimics estrogen. And it does in fact, bioaccumulate in tissues – particularly fats – thus making it a candidate to poison or kill off animals higher up the food chain. The conditions you see in keystone predators – your hawks, eagles, and polar bears – was due to YEARS of gross chemical misuse, and yes, such an act should be avoided. Using pesticides as I said – properly – usually prevents this. Used properly, there wouldn’t be enough of the chemical to bioaccumulate unless said keystone predators lived to be hundreds of years old. But most – not even the larger birds of prey – live for a fraction of that. And we still see the aftereffects of this gross misuse today. I am not speaking in favor of anyone misusing a chemical designed to kill pests – but there is a definite line between proper use, and misuse, and I find both extremes absurd.

Less is definitely more, in this case.

That’s why I’m not in favour of letting just anyone buy and use pesticides with no way to ensure they are doing so properly, I don’t think the risk is justified by the desire for a “weed”-free lawn or the preservation of a crop species so genetically weak that it needs high levels of pesticides to even survive. I think there are so many alternatives that the only reason people stick with pesticides is because, unfortunately due to the huge companies backing them, they are cheap and people percieve them as “easy to use.”

I’m not really sure what the other “extreme” end is from pesticide abuse, other than no pesticide use at all? Is that a bad thought?

[sunhawk]

dark_zorse wrote:

Example 2. Pesticides. Here’s a biggie most green organizations don’t want you to know. Most pesticides and chemicals – including DDT – (oh! End of the world! DDT!) are safe so long as you use them as they are SUPPOSED to be used. In other words… you do not go out and DUMP millions upon MILLIONS of gallons into fields, lakes, and streams. Few folks know DDT was the sole reason why malaria never became a problem in the United States.

This is true to a degree, but it’s also true that even if people use pesticides to the amounts they are supposed to, they still end up in waterways and they still build up in the fatty tissue of animals. It takes longer if people use less, but it’ll still kill animals, including people on rare occasion. It’s a poison, that’s what it’s meant to do. That’s why it affects birds so badly, because of the exponential leveling up of poisoning amounts due to the insects and other small animals they eat that already have their own dose of poison, as if the prey were little storage boxes of pesticide. So yeah it won’t poison you, the person putting it on your plants, but it’s still dangerous because of how it persists in the natural world. That’s my problem with it, more so than the harm to me personally. I can be aware of the risk and take precautions to protect myself, but animals can’t.

[sunhawk]

Another fan of nuclear power here, not only because my dad is a physicist working at the “local” nuclear reactor power plant 😉

I am something of an obsessive recycler, to the point I accidentally got into a fight with my neighbor about trash 😳 You see, where I live, organic waste goes in green bags, recycling in blue and everything else in clear. I went to get my bike out of a shed I share with my neighbor (long story) and found the shed FULL of black garbage bags, of obviously mixed garbage! I was so horrified! LOL I was also really confused, because I know for a fact the garbage trucks won’t pick up anything put in black garbage bags and how did she fill the shed in the two weeks between “clear” garbage pickup, it was at least five full-size bags! So I decided that maybe no one had ever told her the city system, so I wrote a one-page “primer” and suggested the shed wasn’t a good place for food garbage (the door is not animal proof because it’s barely working :X) and boy, that didn’t go over well! She knocked on my door and told me off LOL I tried to be super polite in the note but I guess it rubbed her the wrong way anyway @_@

She also kicked my bike out of our shared shed :X LOL

Anyway, I also bike and walk whenever I can, take the bus to the places I can’t bike or walk to and I also “recycle” in that I am a dedicated street scavenger for people’s unwanted tables and other non-fabric goodies 😉

[sunhawk]

I’m a graphic designer/web designer too and I hear ya! I’ve been working freelance right now but before that I worked a 6 month gig with no benefits because that was the only job I could get that got me out of retail, now I’m looking again! Last time it took me a year to find something :/

[sunhawk]

Jasmine wrote:

Yup, makes me want to pet it. 😀

I kinda want to eat it when I look at the pic, looks like raspberry jam LOL

[sunhawk]

Lokie wrote:

Very cool 🙂

Thank you as well ^_^

[sunhawk]

no problem! 😀

[sunhawk]

Adaneth wrote:

Very nice! 🙂

Thank yew 😀

[sunhawk]

Dragon87 wrote:

sunhawk wrote:

Nice shading! 😀 IMHO, what I think is missing is some longer coverts to lead to the primaries and secondaries
Maybe this would help?
http://www.lab.fws.gov/featheratlas/glossary.php

I’ve been looking for something like this! 😮 😮 You’re my new hero 🙂

LOL No problem, my Google Fu is strong 😉

[sunhawk]

New dragonscale book! 😀

S’pretty, like rich wine, oooo….

[sunhawk]

Nice shading! 😀 IMHO, what I think is missing is some longer coverts to lead to the primaries and secondaries
Maybe this would help?
http://www.lab.fws.gov/featheratlas/glossary.php

[sunhawk]

Lokie wrote:

pixiekissed wrote:

I love her sculpts she has an awesome deviant art gallery!!!

Do you have a link to her deviantart gallery? I’d love to watch her 🙂 Her newest dragon on Livejournal is just insane!

http://creaturesfromel.deviantart.com/ 🙂

[sunhawk]

pixiekissed wrote:

I like the horned owl and the summer owl the best!! nice job!

Thank you! It’s fun drawing different owls 😀

[Author]

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