Category Archives: Nature

How does Ames Parks & Recs do so little with so much?

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Carr Park on East 13th Street in Ames

They can’t empty a damn trash can. I’ve been running or walking in this park for over 8 years. The story is always the same. Below are some more examples. Just lazy. I’ve been trying to find the budget, you’d think that would be a pretty simple thing. Nope. I’m guessing around $5 million. They run a sloppy park. About half of it has been off limits for 4 or 5 years as they had contractors work on dam improvements of the river that runs through it. They write these contractor friendly contracts that say, “We’ll overpay you millions of dollars, and you just get it done whenever!” So they take 5 summers for a 1 summer job. So what if the taxpayers are inconvenienced, we got our kickback. Dog shit all over, just like at Ada Hayden. It never occurs to them, “Hey let’s get one of the bike Cops out here and write some citations!”

The odd thing is, as a percentage they have about 5 times the plow resources than the city crews do. It takes the city a good 24 hours to get things plowed after an 8 inch snow. Parks and Recs get’s it done within 90 minutes after the snow stops. Every Park parking lot (of baseball fields and soccer fields that won’t be used for months), every bike trail, every cemetery, every obscure piece of pavement that won’t be used that day, let alone weeks. They have these baseball fields at Brookside that are not used anymore, but by gawd the lot gets plowed! That’s the other thing about this city, they cannot abide 2 of anything. They completely rebuild in place, rather than have say an eastside library, and a westside library. They end up spending the money to have 2, but they tear down the old one.

Whether its swimming pools, hospitals, baseball fields, high schools, libraries, you name it. The most egregious was about 25 years ago when the school board makes the claim, “Declining enrollment, we’ll have to close schools.” Yeah? On the other hand they’re trying to tell the 2000 census that the city has now grown to 50,000 people. Well which is it? Are you growing or shrinking? Sure enough 10 years later they’re building schools out the wazoo. I guess the problem with Parks and Recs is the same as the school workers, they’re good at sitting on their ass plowing a lot on evening or weekend overtime, but getting off their ass to empty a trashcan is too much.

Half the park closed for 5 years because they make sweetheart deals instead of contracts with time constraints

With the City of Ames, failure is not just an option, its the routine

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The City of Ames will not release their work plans as to approximate dates for return of electrical power. They guard these knowledge as if they were the invasion plans for Normandy. They could tell us, but then they’d have to kill us. Their stupidity knows no bounds. People can’t plan without this knowledge. They might take a trip if they are on the ‘still a week away list’. They might buy a generator if it was looking like 5 more days. Any number of things. But if your power is coming on tonight, you’d wait it out. You wouldn’t drop $3K.

“This area 1-2 days. That area 4-6. That area over there7 or 8.” But they always act with this bureaucratic nonsense like they are going to get sued if they tell someone maybe Thursday and its not till Friday. There’s not a court in the world that would hold them to that. But it would let people have some idea, so they could make some kind plans. If all you’re looking at is 24 hours you can ride that out. Just asinine.

The lack of information manifested itself in another way. Anyone who has listened to radio knows that annoying, “Beep! Beep! Beep! This is an alert from the Emergency Broadcast System!” They completely missed it on warning us for this storm. That’s one issue. But the other more obvious failure was the lack of follow-up. Its not just “the event”, the tornado, the flood, the ice storm, the blizzard, there’s the aftermath. People need to know: does the next town over have ice? Power? Water? What about Des Moines? Were they brought to there knees? Is there a charity somewhere handing out items? Where to you signup to be put on the cue for volunteer help with the cleanup? There’s a ton of questions people need answers to when they don’t have TV or internet, and no gawd damn AM radio station on the air!

What the sam hell is the point of having an Emergency Broadcast System is it breaks during the emergency? And they don’t have anything so basic as a generator?? Or a makeshift emergency tower to transmit with? What are we, Mexico? My gawd. I know we’re talking City workers here. You accept they’re going to be lazy, stupid, slow and  incompetent, we get that, but there has to be minimum standards. There has to be some threshold where they walk and chew gum at the same time. The City Administrator makes like have a million a year, and this is their response to an emergency?? 

Doesn’t the County have some responsibility? The State? My gawd, from top to bottom its incompetence. They didn’t even coordinate with the college radio station to be its communication point for people needing information. Those guys would have loved to have a responsibility. Or do what rest areas in Nebraska and Colorado do, “For more information tune to 1250 am on your radio”. They don’t even try to be useful. Part of the problem is the local paper does not hold their feet to the fire. I don’t know if its cronyism or stupidity. The only time bureaucrats respond is when they are called out in public.

The City of Ames isn’t serious about disaster preparedness

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This city seemed to be lacking a bit in disaster preparedness when the recent Derecho blew through town. Its not like they are lacking in tax revenue, the citizens of Ames are most certainly in the upper percentile of taxation when compared to all of Iowa. The windstorm that came through 11 am Monday morning exposed all the weaknesses of their nonexistent plan. This is child’s play!

You coordinate essential services beforehand with:

  • a grocery store
  • a home improvement store
  • a retail / grocery store
  • a gas station
  • a radio station

If other outlets want to get in on the action, that’s great, but you make damn sure 1 of each of these essential services is. After an emergency with extended no power, people need: gasoline, food, toiletries, information. The shit barely hit the fan (let alone a full blown SHTF) and Ames is crippled. No one has a damn generator for their store! How new homes and businesses can be built without generator capability built in is beyond me. Ames I’m sure has a disaster coordinator, so who did he coordinate with? Nothing was open for 24 hours! That guy needs to be the first one fired. You contract with someone (how much could it cost? They’ll be the only game in town in the immediate aftermath) to damn well be open.

One of the most obvious to go with food, gas, water, was information. TV is obviously not the medium with no electricity. Your webpage is not the answer with no internet/cable. The newspaper is too limited in scope. What does that leave? The damn radio you morons! The local radio station KASI does not have a backup emergency transmitter tower or generator. They didn’t step up to the plate, they didn’t know where the damn plate was! It was like 4 days before they were back on the air. Its not much of an Emergency Broadcast System, if it collapses at the first sign of an emergency.

Don’t let them give you any damn shit about the cost of a transmitter and generator, a small emergency tower that can cover a 5 mile radius can be stored till needed and erected anywhere. Were not talking 50,000 watts here, 100 (to cover the entire city of Ames only requires a 5 mile radius). In order to get a damn license every few years they are supposed to demonstrate their community service. Like all government agencies, the actions of the FCC are dictated by cronyism. Servicing the monopolies, keeping out the competition.

Disaster hits and the city is out to lunch, as are government licensed entities not fulfilling their license requirements.

A Webster City radio station was the one giving out emergency information! Webster City! Information is critical in a disaster. With no power people are up a creek. But not with a battery operated or car radio! “This is the Emergency Broadcast System!” Except when it ain’t because we give licenses out to morons! Except when there’s an actual emergency. Then they’re no where to be found. “A storm might take out the tower?” Shazzam! “We might be with out power?” Shazzam! There was no EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM.

People didn’t know who was open, where they could get gas, food and water. We pay so many billions of dollars for FEMA, and Homeland Security and this agency and that agency, and when push comes to shove: nothing. WHO in Des Moines? Useless! They were running Sean Hannity! They’ll take Rush off for a cloud in the sky, but when people really need information after a disaster? Nothing.

Dogs and cats, monkeys and bats

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Some of my best friends are cats. I feel I owe it to them to attempt this exercise in futility and try and educate ignorant Americans about what goes on in China. Assuming this picture is a few years old, these cats pictured will have long ago been eaten by “humans”. Aside from the evil nature of it, you can ask a biologist sometime why its not in the interest of humans to eat carnivores. That list of animals in the title of this post? That’s just a sampling of what those nutcases in China eat. You’re not supposed to eat predators. The rest of the world pays a price because the Chinese are evil retards. Environmentally, ecologically, medically. Harsh words? You bet.

Piebald

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What Is the Difference Between Piebald and Skewbald?

By Jennifer Mueller

“Piebald and skewbald are British terms for particular color combinations on horses’ coats. These terms describe the horse’s coloration and external markings only, not its breed or genetic makeup. In addition to coloration, registration authorities also recognize particular patterns of markings. According to the British Skewbald and Piebald Association, a horse registered as piebald or skewbald ideally has a 50-50 distribution of two colors.”

“Piebald horses have large, irregular patches of black and white on their coats. Skewbald horses, on the other hand, have a combination of white and any other color — typically brown, chestnut or bay… ” [the article goes on for quite a bit about these beautiful horses]

Ode to Trampy

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The 1 year anniversary of the death of a very fine German Shorthair Pointer came and went in October. In this picture it captured him before the infirmities of old age ravaged his body. As I would tell people as my mistakes as an owner became more and more obvious, he was one hell of a lot more dog then I was owner.  I’d really like to warn other owners not to do what I did. Tramp liked to play Frisbee. So we played Frisbee. Lots of Frisbee. No vet had ever warned me: work them too hard and they will blow out their knee.

GSHP are stiff necked. They are working dogs. They will work themselves to death if you don’t show some judgement. He looked at Frisbee as his ‘job’. He was very good at it. It was up to me to have limited it. He blew his knee. Very painful, very long rehab. That and an idiot vet in Huxley who let me mask the pain symptoms for years with pills. It eventually caught up with him. It just kills me when I see lazy owners riding on a bicycle with their dog on a leash running beside them. They’re coasting and the dog is working himself to death to please them.

Tell you what fat ass, let’s see you get off the bike and run that fast for 30 seconds. You’re asking your dog to do it for 30 minutes. It should be against the law.

 

Guillermo Gonzalez

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Guillermo Gonzalez of Iowa State University was burned at the stake for saying there was a God. On his own time. What’s ironic was the instigator of his firing was a professor of religion, Hector Avalos. I was reminded of all this today when it came out a Canadian professor was fired for stating polar bears weren’t endangered. You do not want to cross the climate Nazis. They have their agenda and that is that. Blasphemy is not allowed with the religion of the secularists, climatology.

Gonzalez was a professor of astronomy at ISU who helped with the making of the above pictured DVD and book, The Privileged Planet. He wasn’t particularly a religious zealot, but as his knowledge of the universe grew it became obvious to him that planet Earth was not an accident. I believe after his firing he landed on his feet at another university back east. From the few clips I’ve seen of him he seemed like a nice, rational, humble man. Quite unlike the strident nincompoop who got him fired, Hector Avalos.