Agriculture at the Speed of Thought

Pluck it and plant it....that's my goal.....or semi-realistic agricultural fantasy.

I've always been an acorn snatcher and pine cone gatherer.....
What would it take to simply grow whatever seed pods I can forage from my whereabouts?

As a kid, we would gather the grapefruit seeds left over from breakfast and shove them in some dirt in a cup and place them reverently into the sunlight streaming in onto the window ledge and watch delightedly as they grew into real live plants.....nice and tall and then would topple and never quite become the grand indoor grapefruit trees we imagined would appear. But it did teach us what was possible. Grapefruits could potentially be grown from seeds, if only the right environment was created and nurtured.

But is it merely fantasy or more than possible? What would it take to grab any ole acorn or shake the seeds from a pine cone, bury it in some good dark earth , water it and set it under a grow light?
Would it be so hard to grow a proverbial forest indoors ? ")

It would be so thrilling to watch something that I plucked and planted easily sprout roots and a firm trunk and then be able to see it flourish into a hardy strong plant....or even a short tree?

Have you ever had any luck with adding rooting compounds to your indoor plant/indoor tree experiments?

Ever used a grow light?

My son used to play Farmville online for hours....and I dabbled with it upon occasion some years ago. What a delight to be able to grow things virtually overnight...and be rewarded with a speedy and visible harvest :)

Hey, with today's technology and "anything is possible" mentality, I believe that we are just on the cusp of massive agricultural breakthroughs. Vertical farms are just the start. I just pray that I will be able to play with some of these new hi tech "easy grow" food crops right here in my home....and voila...poof...an almost instant harvest ")

Peace,
Carla


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What is the REAL Program Behind Rewards Cards?

Ed Liebow, executive director of the American Anthropological Association, says corporations increasingly struggle to make sense of the big data sets they collect on their customers. (quoted from article "Beyond Spam"
at https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-hormel-spam/)


So we can agree that corporations are collecting "big data" on you and on me.....all of us, as often as they can.
Yes, they may be having trouble  managing and/or extracting helpful information from that  big data, but that is only a matter of time and acumen.

One of the ways in which corporations collect data on us, their customers, is through the use of "rewards points cards". These "loyalty cards" are swiped
whenever someone buys anything at a certain store, and reports precisely when ( precise dates and times), where and what a human is purchasing. It also records the total bill of that particular transaction....and how it was paid for.....cash, debit or which credit card.

Why do we use loyalty cards and thus voluntarily give corporations precious private data about our purchasing habits? Because we LOVE free stuff, even if the real value of the points is quite small in real dollars.

It may take someone two years to accumulate enough "loyalty reward points"
in order to purchase even $20 worth of free merchandise, but humans are toting around dozens of rewards point cards, with the mere whisper that they might score some great freebies in the near or unforeseeable future.

Does that mean that I denounce points cards? Nope. But I do want to remind my readers that whenever they are using ANY kind of rewards points cards, that their shopping data is being collected about EVERY SINGLE transaction they swipe that particular points card for.

Corporations spend billions of dollars annually to do market research and here we are giving it to them on a platter for free or next-to-nothing....by voluntarily using our rewards points/loyalty cards....(  a free coffee is all it takes for many of us to divulge tons of our most personal shopping habits!)

Collect travel miles? Yes, your transactions are being collected and stored and analysed so that big corporations can figure out how to market more products to us and part us from more of our money. No, they aren't necessarily out to steal from you, but their goal is to accumulate as much of your cash as possible through the sales and marketing of their products.

Am I anti-corporation ? Nope.....far from it. But I just want my fellow consumers to be aware of the information that they are freely giving away to large corporations simply by using/swiping their loyalty/rewards point cards.

On a bit of a side note....paying cash is still more anonymous than using a debit or credit card. But cameras are rolling anyway, recording all transactions on film no matter how we pay for it....and no matter which rewards point cards we may or may not be swiping.

But maybe just maybe, we can limit the amount of free information that we provide to big corporations for free or next to nothing. Maybe we can think before we whip out our fave points card the next time we run to the store.
Maybe we don't care who finds out what our favourite brand of corn chips are, and where we like to buy them, at what price and at what time of the day and with what form or cash/debit/credit we pay for that bag of corn chips. But maybe we do care.....and maybe we don't need to sell our most valuable information quite so cheaply. 

Thinkfully yours,
Carla

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I just Don't Get It

There is a finite amount of oil in our earth's crust. Yes, folks may quibble about the actual volume....but there is a good consensus  that there is a REAL and DEFINITE measurable quantity of oil worldwide, which will eventually run out.

So, what I really don't get.....is even with all the haggling of OPEC and other oil producers, why hasn't the price of oil stocks bounced back?
Suncor,  (TSX:SU)    is still stuck at under $36 per common share as of today.....at $35.19 cdn.

Perhaps the stock market has become naively obsessed  with electric vehicles, without realizing that a significant chunk of our electrical grid is still powered by the oil and gas industry.

I've done a post or two about that before. Electric powered "anythings" are not necessarily green. It's all about what is used to create the electricity we will all be using.

As of 2014, 8.7% of Ontario's electrical grid is powered by the oil and gas industry. Yes, tis true.


For a break down of Ontario's Energy Mix....take a gander at this document:
http://www.ontarioenergyboard.ca/oeb/_Documents/Regulatory/2014_Supply_Mix_Data.pdf

Do you have some profound views about the lagging state of oil and gas stocks?

Eager for your feedback,
Thinkfully yours,
Carla.



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