Individuality, Privacy, and the need for effort

I'm occasionally struck by the reality of modern Internet Communities and the amount of private information they can reveal.

From Facebook to Twitter, people are literally taking their most private details, and making a public spectacle out of them, which seems a bit foolish. The Internet is "forever" meaning 10 or 15 years down the road, what is youthful behavour now, will be cringe worthy later as people, believe it or not, change over time.

And it should also be mentioned that Officials frequently look for MySpace pages during the course of investigations, or when they are merely fishing around, and there has been two cases of such information leading to people's deaths at the hands of law enforcement simply because some well meaning, but misguided soul posted pictures of themselves with firearms on their myspace pages, in one case in NC, a poor slob simply had pictures of his friend holding firearms and he was killed in a incompetent SWAT raid on his home near a college campus.

It makes some sense to participate in such social sites, it makes even more sense to publish as little actual person information as possible and still participate with ones friends.

In Biblical terms, "Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves, be ye wise as serpents, and gentle as doves"

Over a month with no posts..dressed up for the New Year.

It's been a month, but no time lost per se, Deflation is beginning to emerge into the US Economy, and that is one tough thing to deal with effectively.

For the Alpha Strategist, this is a prime time to load up on long term storage items, prices will not be lower then they are now, add in a staggering 7.2% unemployment rate, and things are beginning to become "interesting".

It would make sense to acquire supplies for the larder now, as when unemployment hits, not only will one be broke, one will also be unable to purchase personal health items, or food supplies, or motor oil, or any of the things that make life move forward.

This downturn happening in the Winter only makes matters worse, but if one shows forsight, like the Ant in the parable, and gathered in the Fall, or gathers now, especially if one is employed in a Tourist or Travel business, one will be able to ride out a rough patch.

SWAT team confiscates families food supply in Ohio

On the surface, this could be a hysteria inducing story for an Alpha Strategist, the local county SWAT team raids a small family business and home and carts off food stuffs and leaves no paper work or inventory documenting their actions.

Could your larder be next?

Ewww...scary..scary...like FDR and Gold in 1933

But alas, nothing quite so dramatic:

"On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse http://www.mannastorehouse.com on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years"

Basically they sold or donated uninspected beef to a college, the beef was free of both steroids and the normal massive doses of anti biotics that some beef are currently injected with, which of course tipped Inspector Cleseau, who was denied membership in the Co-Op so he came back a week later with men armed with fully automatic weapons, bullet proof vests, and flash bang hand grenades...over a paperwork issue.

Spam..it's what's for dinner

A recent article mentioned that sales of the canned meat product Spam have shot up 10% since September.

Spam is sort of a platypus of food, and to be frank, relying on it for nutrition over the long haul is dubious, but that increase in sales when added with the increase in the sales of seeds for DIY food production, America clearly sees some hard times on the horizon.

It requires hundreds of pounds of food to feed a family of four, solid nutrition is actually inexpensive to purchase in bulk, foods such as Barley and Split Peas or even Oats are good values and available in bulk.

5 best and 5 worst deals at Costco

For using a stockpiling strategy to defeat the corrosive tax of inflation, Warehouse Clubs are hard to beat...in theory, if one watches prices places such as Sams, BJ's and Costco sometimes have great bulk deals, other times, not so much.

So helpfully, MSN money has provided a small portion of insight into the best and worst deals at Costco and presumably the other Warehouse Clubs as well:

The Best, Meat, Electronics, Dairy and Eggs*, Alcohol, Prescription Drugs.

The worst, Designer Clothing, Frozen Foods, Products purchased in Bulk and wasted via shrinkage, Paper Goods and Gasoline.

Now far be it from this humble AS to disagree with the mighty MSN Money, but they are off base, people who stockpile in anticipation of hard times learn the skills needed to make buying Bulk and Frozen foods productive and not deductive.

Bulk Foods are broken down into smaller air tight containers, Frozen Foods are broken up into smaller units and used more quickly, in my area Eggs are actually a dollar more expensive at the local Sam's then they are at the local discount shopping retailer and key storage items like Spaghetti Sauce are also more of a value at the local discounter.

Gasoline is difficult to purchase at the local Sam's as they have a strange pay now, drive over to pumps with the receipt to fill up the tank, with local Gas and Kiosk retailer EnMark doing business in the area, such a inconveinence is not worth the effort and EnMark also has Water and Air to top off your vehicle with.

So as per usual with such articles, knowing local conditions is the key to winning the retailing game, look at prices and inconveince and decide at what point saving money in small amounts is not worth the effort or trouble, and choose accordingly.

Another odd one, Hanging Pheasant

Recently ran across a different Blog about Hunting and found another long forgotten practice:

Hanging Pheasants, or for some Dry Aging Beef.

Basically once the bird is reduced to possession, it is left to err "age" until the tissue begins to break down (better known as rot slightly) in order to enhance the flavor of otherwise a nondescript version of Chicken.

I can recall reading about that practice in James Clavell's Shogun, but thought it was sort of created merely by a lack of refrigeration, apparently I was incorrect:


"

The great Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarindoesn’t give a timetable, but says, “the peak is reached when the pheasant begins to decompose; its aroma develops, and mixes with an oil which in order to form must undergo a certain amount of fermentation, just as the oil in coffee can only be drawn out by roasting it.” Sounds pretty hardcore.

Roy Wall wrote in 1945: “The flesh of either wild game or domesticated animals and fowl can certainly be improved by aging, but it is my opinion that there must be a limit to the aging process…aging in the open air for 10 days or a month, according to weather conditions, is, in my opinion, most beneficial to domestic and wild meat alike."

Hmm...well..mmkay...

As for the Alpha Strategy, right now prices seem to have stabilized, I would however point out that food producers sign contracts in advance, sometimes years in advance, with the decline in prices of commodities there will be less production of those commodities, meaning prices will rise sometime in early 2009.

Now the other thing to keep in mind is Government introduced scarcity, there are less then 50 days until the real possibility exists that items such as rifles and ammunition and magazines will increase in price even moreso then Alpha Strategists are seeing today, add in the real possiblity of precious metals becoming a safe haven until political leadership sorts out how much inflation they wish to introduce into the US and indeed World Economy...

A rarity, the lost art of Ferreting in the UK

I always found the idea of hunting with ferrets both intriguing and a bit distasteful, on one hand, they are no different then using hounds to hunt rabbits, on the other, they give a massive advantage to the hunter that uses them.

Anyhow, here is a interesting of one such hunt:

We pulled up in the farm yard and left the jeep at the same spot as we had yesterday. I pushed 3 cartridges into my gun and we put out game bags on over one shoulder and slowly crawled towards the gate. We slipped the guns through the gaps in the fence and picked a target. I picked two big fat rabbits sitting right next to each other. My grandad started the countdown, 3, 2, 1. We sent all of our shots at the rabbits and stood up while re-loading so we could get a better aim. we fired off another 2 rounds each and went to pick up our rabbits. We gutted them and left them to cool in the grass behind the jeep. we netted up all the holes, set the long nets and set some peg snares on the runs to catch any lucky escapees. I put Purdey and Kala into the first bury and Dodge and Stinker into the second while my grandad put 5 of his into one massive bury that went under a tree. We killed 16 in the first ten minutes after putting down the ferrets and another 47 in the next hour. My grandads ferrets sent out a pheasant and he shot it before I.."


Obviously, ferrets are dynamite game animals, these gents apparently had a source to purchase the excess rabbits they had bagged, and since Rabbits reproduce several times a year, no great pressure was put on the local populace.

Ferret hunting in the US is rare, in fact some MidWestern States had banned their use in the 40's and 50's, the ferret is just that effective...