Buy a slightly used hearse or a plain brown box. A Lancaster, Pennsylvania funeral business is auctioning equipment and assets to cover debts of "crooked" funeral business owner.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Busted Funeral Business on Auction Block :: Caddy Hearse for Sale
Buy a slightly used hearse or a plain brown box. A Lancaster, Pennsylvania funeral business is auctioning equipment and assets to cover debts of "crooked" funeral business owner.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Sewers :: Private or Public Services?
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| Curbside "night soil" collectors. 19th c. |
What Goes In, Comes Out.
WASTE WATER SYSTEMS IN THE US
Body parts in sewers? Why is this happening? People used to be sensible enough to dispose of spare of body parts by digging a hole with a shovel.
Turns my stomach to think the waste water system is being used to flush body parts away. Wastewater gets hit with a few sacks of chlorine and a spin through the filter - wash cycle to return as drinking water.
Ick! A tour of your local wastewater treatment plant is instructive. Can they catch and remove everything that goes into wastewater? Check out a "purified" water bottler too. Or, learn how to purify water yourself.
We can't live without water and there's not enough of it.
Ick! A tour of your local wastewater treatment plant is instructive. Can they catch and remove everything that goes into wastewater? Check out a "purified" water bottler too. Or, learn how to purify water yourself.
We can't live without water and there's not enough of it.
And who owns the clean tap water resources and waste water systems that serve your suburb, city, town or farm? It's probably not "the Gubber-mint."
How does the waste water system work in the US, anyway? Mostly, it's owned by private companies. Some small, some ginormous. A great rush to privatize US waste water systems occurred in the early to mid-1990s when the Clean Water Act was up for renewal. Big international water companies snapped up small US water companies and especially waste water treatment where the profits flow.
In the decade since the U.S. has been flushing cash down the gasping maw of the wars and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the scalp money to nearby countries like Pakistan, Israel and Kyrghistan, more than a few towns and cities in the Continental U.S. are selling off water and waste water treatment systems. The cities and towns just can't afford the burden.
Grand Rapids is one example. Other towns are in the market reports USA Today. Economies of scale, and reduced work forces, enable larger water management companies to improve the net income from water treatment and wastewater management.
Politics involved in privatization of water includes fresh and waste water systems owned by corporations based in foreign countries, not in itself a bad thing, but when things go wrong, it's helpful to have a decision maker in the same zip code. Or not. Proximity doesn't guarantee dedicated or informed management.
Severn Trent Services, the current name for a very experienced British water treatment company, states it understands the North American wastewater treatment and water market. Veolia Environnement offers similar water management services. Actually, STS and Veolia, to name just two companies in a large, prosperous industry, doubtless offer high-quality water management services. Europe, with its concentrated urban populations, developed filtered wastewater treatment more than 200 years ago. Scotland first, in 1804.
Scotland, England, France, and other nations established functioning municipal water and sewer systems long before flush toilets were a universal commodity in U.S. households.
U.S. municipalities developed a faster waste filtering system in 1890.
The class division of effective wastewater treatment in America tells another story. Analysis of U.S. census data in 1970 indicates about 10% of U.S. households relied on a privy or similar, especially in states with low per capita income. The insidious and under-reported concentration of residual pharmaceuticals in U.S. drinking water also deserves inquiry and remediation. Maybe by 2180?
In the decade since the U.S. has been flushing cash down the gasping maw of the wars and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the scalp money to nearby countries like Pakistan, Israel and Kyrghistan, more than a few towns and cities in the Continental U.S. are selling off water and waste water treatment systems. The cities and towns just can't afford the burden.
Grand Rapids is one example. Other towns are in the market reports USA Today. Economies of scale, and reduced work forces, enable larger water management companies to improve the net income from water treatment and wastewater management.
Politics involved in privatization of water includes fresh and waste water systems owned by corporations based in foreign countries, not in itself a bad thing, but when things go wrong, it's helpful to have a decision maker in the same zip code. Or not. Proximity doesn't guarantee dedicated or informed management.
Severn Trent Services, the current name for a very experienced British water treatment company, states it understands the North American wastewater treatment and water market. Veolia Environnement offers similar water management services. Actually, STS and Veolia, to name just two companies in a large, prosperous industry, doubtless offer high-quality water management services. Europe, with its concentrated urban populations, developed filtered wastewater treatment more than 200 years ago. Scotland first, in 1804.
Scotland, England, France, and other nations established functioning municipal water and sewer systems long before flush toilets were a universal commodity in U.S. households.
U.S. municipalities developed a faster waste filtering system in 1890.
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| Human waste pushed outside a residential compound during Winter for collection in Spring. |
What do economics of privatization mean for municipalities? Competition among towns to attract the best deal from multinational water management corporations shopping for a bargain water service. And there may be issue concerning regulatory authority for these companies exploring the US market.
What does privatization mean for taxpayers? Often, higher water supply and wastewater treatment fees, with curtailed service.
Figure it out: who owns your tap water and who owns the sewer service in your neighborhood? Consider installing a composting toilet (Made in the USA) and go off the wastewater grid.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Do you have a plan for dealing with your online presence? Virtual assets and information need attention. Leaving your heirs the passwords might not be enough.
From Gmail to Twitter, Facebook to LI, with all our blogs, emails and other online accounts, most active people maintain a deep online presence that someone will need to cope with after you flit away from this life.
Who cares, you may be thinking. It may not matter at all. You may snicker at the idea of leaving a professional profile or Facebook antics to survive in the cloud until electricity and fiber optics are replaced with some other format for passing digi-bytes.
Consider, though, that your virtual assets are worth annotating to help your estate manager and heirs handle this aspect of your public self with dignity and as you intend.
Check it out!
The Washington Examiner carried this WSJ column of July 28, 2012.
Smart Money ran this on Aug 28, 2012.
Access to Facebook after death. Mercury News. March 15, 2012.
Mange online assets before you die. Techlicious . July 18, 2012.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Eva Peron :: RIP July 27
The New York Times obituary notes that Eva Peron died on July 27, 1952.
For years, I held on to the uncorrected proofs of the book Life and Death of Eva Peron which was published in 1979. (see photograph below). The book came to me at one of the many book sales in this area where bibliophiles comb through piles of oddities from reviewers, publishers and disappointed readers.
Recently I donated the book to the friends of the local library, so they can offer it for sale. And so the book change hands, possibly circuit around other used book stores and sales, much like Eva's corpse has traveled.
Does anyone born after 1995 know who Evita was? The broadway musical Evita! might help her live on, similar to the way Jesus Christ Superstar helps Jesus.
Mournful fictional video depicting Eva's end.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Who died? :: Who lied?
Twin Towers Deaths, Wars, Lies and Incompetence
This is what happens when elected officials, executives and other unprepared "leaders" put their cronies and sycophants in jobs they aren't equipped to handle.
- Nine Eleven :: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093000282.html
- Hurricane Katrina Aftermath :: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/ns/us_news-katrina_the_long_road_back/t/fema-chief-relieved-katrina-duties/#.UArrmI5vaFI
- Arlington Cemetery :: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20007337-503544.html
Have you seen the video clip of former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice stating that 3,000 Americans died in the destruction of the Twin Towers, the World Trade Center in New York City, famously known as “911”?
The numbers aren’t quite right.
- 2,176 of the people who died at the WTC collapse and aftermath were born in the USA.
- 372 were foreign nationals, excluding the perpetrators of the crimes.
- 90 countries were represented in the casualties.
- 573 of the dead were born in other countries.
Data on total deaths related to the events of that day in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia were not included in the WTC Disaster Death report authored by the City of New York.
Sources: Departent of Mental and Mental Hygiene, Bureau of Vital Statistics, The City of New York. Special Section: World Trade Center Disaster Deaths, December 2003.
http://www.nyc.gov/health
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks
It was convenient for the decadent Bush administration to pick a number and describe all the deceased as “Americans” but that wasn’t true.
Among the dead were people of fame: Berry Berenson, photographer, a relative of art historian Bernand Berenson and the sister of actor Marisa Berenson. Anne Patten, “Mrs George Crile," the daughter of diplomat and author Susan Mary Jay Alsop, a descendant of John Jay.
And many, many people were just doing their job -- pouring coffee, taking tickets, typing e-mails, answering phones and mopping floors.
Let's not forget the rescue workers and medical personnel.
Thirty Years War in Afghanistan and Iraq :: 1991 to 2012
GHW Bush Announcement of 1991 War against Iraq -- Daddy's War
3,000 Armed Forces have perished in Afghanistan, Bush Junior's War, reports the Telegraph.
Do you think that 300,000 Iraqis and Afghanis have died after a decade of war? Probably, but nobody knows.
Does anyone acknowledge those children, girls, grandmothers, boys and blind men who happened to be in the way? Ah, right, it's war. Terrible things happen to bystanders.
Good news, the official count is not 300,000 people, yet. As of 2011, according to Wired Magazine, the number was only around 132,000.
Polyphagia :: Definition :: Eat :: Swallow
Ugh. Um, yes.
This article in the English newspaper The Telegraph is about cannibalism in 2012,
not 1550, the time frame of Hans Staden's True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil, edited and translated by Neil Whitehead and Michael Harbsmeier. He lived to tell the tale.
In April 2012, the Huffington Post reported, the unfortunate three met the killers when they applied for a nanny position in the household of those charged by Brazilian authorities with murder and cannibalism. According to a CBS News report, there were other victims. CNN also covered the story.
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Flesh, cells and protein rot. You've seen vegetables disintegrating into piles of squashed odor and off-beat color. You've smelled rancid milk. You didn't eat that meat or the fish that seemed a little off. You know that wounds are risky sites.
Social niceness keeps us in the dark about the decadent reality of human flesh as it decays.
Political and business interests avoid revealing the facts of iatrogenic disease, which is a fancy name for infection that starts in medical settings -- clinics, emergency rooms, ICU, surgeries, waiting rooms, examining rooms, and all the other places where practitioners of all stripes wear latex gloves but forget to wash their hands.
Read more about staph infections and the many ways they are transmitted in medical settings. Know the symptoms and act immediately to secure proper care. Understand how to protect yourself from infection after or during emergency care settings, particularly in certain states, provinces, regions and countries where you'd think medical care is universally top notch, but in fact, it's not. Not by a long shot.
The key to evaluating medical care is not counting how many successful transplants or open heart surgeries occur, nor how many elaborate imaging and analytic processes are on offer, but knowing the incidence of staph infection acquired during brief emergency room encounters or infection associated with routine procedures will help you keep your flesh, and your life.
Does the U.S. Center for Disease Control weekly Morbidity and Mortality report include iatrogenic staph infection numbers? Did you know common staphylococcus aureus infections are resistant to medication?
Social niceness keeps us in the dark about the decadent reality of human flesh as it decays.
Political and business interests avoid revealing the facts of iatrogenic disease, which is a fancy name for infection that starts in medical settings -- clinics, emergency rooms, ICU, surgeries, waiting rooms, examining rooms, and all the other places where practitioners of all stripes wear latex gloves but forget to wash their hands.
Read more about staph infections and the many ways they are transmitted in medical settings. Know the symptoms and act immediately to secure proper care. Understand how to protect yourself from infection after or during emergency care settings, particularly in certain states, provinces, regions and countries where you'd think medical care is universally top notch, but in fact, it's not. Not by a long shot.
The key to evaluating medical care is not counting how many successful transplants or open heart surgeries occur, nor how many elaborate imaging and analytic processes are on offer, but knowing the incidence of staph infection acquired during brief emergency room encounters or infection associated with routine procedures will help you keep your flesh, and your life.
Does the U.S. Center for Disease Control weekly Morbidity and Mortality report include iatrogenic staph infection numbers? Did you know common staphylococcus aureus infections are resistant to medication?
Florida 2012
“...was zip-lining last Tuesday near her home with her friends when she suffered a cut on her calf that required 22 staples to close. She came back to the emergency room at Tanner Medical Center in Carrollton, Ga. ...”
Perhaps the staphylococcus aureus infection and subsequent necrotizing fascists commenced but after contact in the emergency room where her leg was stapled (!) together. The cut wasn't the source of infection, but the subsequent emergency room contacts infected her.
Florida 2012
Florida - Tampa
“It's caused by two usually common bacteria, streptococcus and staphylococcus aureus ...”
commonly found in hospital emergency room settings as well as on the human body.
Resources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18476182
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