07:52 – One often-overlooked advantage of maintaining a large stock of stored foods and eating routinely from those stores is that it allows you to avoid eating foods that end up being recalled. For example, I see that Kraft just recalled a quarter million cases of their Mac & Cheese dinners. The problem this time is minor–metal bits in a few of the boxes–but in the past there have been recalls for serious issues like botulism contamination.
Speaking of food, I see that our moron state legislators are pushing a bill to deal with the supposed problem of “food deserts” in rural and urban North Carolina. They plan to subsidize convenience stores to carry fresh fruits and vegetables, believing that the problem is that poor people can’t get to supermarkets so the solution is to bring “healthy” foods to the convenience stores where they shop. Needless to say, those fresh foods will rot on the convenience store shelves. The reason poor people don’t eat more fresh foods isn’t because they have to travel to get to supermarkets. The reason is that they’re too lazy to prepare them. They’d rather eat convenience foods.
As I’ve said before, we need to get rid of food stamps and return to the classical Roman grain dole. Any citizen should be able to get a free food supply once a month just by showing up and signing on the line. That month’s food supply should comprise one 1-pound box of salt, a liter of vegetable oil, one 5-pound can of beans, and six 5-pound cans of white flour. That provides all the nutrition one person needs for one month at an actual cost of about $0.50 per day.
Red beans rice and corn bread. Probably needs some minor additives to be complete.
I actually would expand it to include other foods, especially those that are ‘subsidized’. Rather than cutting checks, we could just buy a bunch when the price falls too low and add it to the monthly dole.
Oh, and make the free lunch program free for all children, regardless of means.
The details don’t matter much. With white flour and/or rice, beans provide all of the amino acids (protein) required by humans. The liter of oil provides the lipids needed. The real point is that dry staples are incredibly cheap, and it would be much cheaper to give away food to all citizens who wanted it rather than run our current EBT system. The recipients would also be getting better quality food.
I haven’t really looked into the matter, but I believe that those below BPL (Below Poverty Line) in India get just about that: some rice, some lentils, maybe some vegetables, AND a canister of LPG to cook with.
I’m now curious. How does that break down into daily portions / menu?
The goal is not to keep the people feed, but to purchase their votes at the poll to stay in power. Just as the coliseum can no longer compete with modern media such as reality TV on 60 inch screens, mere bread and beans will gain the attention of those used to fast food, pizza, and junk food. The government dole will have to be improved.
To buy their votes, sure, but also to keep them in the inner cities, relatively content. But the real reason, as always, is to employ more government workers. That’s the real source of power, and has been since civilization was invented.
It’s interesting. Back before I decided to do a non-fiction prepping book, I’d started work (with Pournelle’s blessing) on what amounted to an updated version of Lucifer’s Hammer, reset to today and from the California mountains to the North Carolina mountains.
I decided the whole running-out-of-food-and-people-starving thing had been done to death, so I imagined a book centered on a small community of about 2,000 with a forward-looking local government. They’d received a $1,000,000 grant from the feds to upgrade their emergency management equipment and supplies, and after strong argument from one of the protagonists decided to allocate half of that to purchasing long-term food in bulk, enough to feed their population for a year. With that taken care of, I’d be able to focus on the dynamics of a small town facing a world-wide disaster. Not that producing food would become immaterial by any means, but with food less an issue I could focus on group dynamics, how the population would improve their situation and defend themselves, and so on.
Well, divide it out. A pound of flour (or rice, etc.) per day per person, 2.5+ ounces of beans per day per person, just over an ounce of vegetable oil per day per person, and about half an ounce of (iodized) salt per person per day. That’s about 2,000 calories per day per person, with nutritionally adequate amounts of carbohydrates, protein, and fat.
As to menu, that’s their problem, and I can’t say I care. I presume they’d be eating a lot of gruel. Please, sir, may I have some more, sir?
Dole. Yes. However, I would probably add 15 multivitamin pills, one for every other day. No scurvy plebs!
Rather than cutting checks, we could just buy a bunch when the price falls too low and add it to the monthly dole.
Remember government cheese? They do this already. The stuff ends up at schools, food banks, etc.
No need for vitamin pills. Just supply the flour/rice in a supplemented version.
I just got an email accusing me of being RACIST for this morning’s post. In fact, I don’t care what color people are, in this or any other aspect. The dole would be available to any citizen who cared to take advantage of it: rich or poor, young or old, man or woman or child, black or white or yellow or red.
This moron also thinks that people on the dole are entitled to choice of what they eat. Says who? Wasn’t “Beggars can’t be choosers” one of the copy-book headings? If not, it should have been.
I think any civilized society must take steps to make sure its citizens don’t starve. To that extent, I’m willing to pay taxes to support a minimalist food support program, run at the lowest cost and staffed almost entirely by volunteers. I’m not willing to pay extra to make the food appetizing or to give people a choice of foods. If they want meat, fruits, vegetables, etc. let them figure out how to earn the money to pay for them. Orthodox Jewish? Tough shit. We don’t spend a cent extra to make sure anything is kosher. Nor does their religion require them to eat kosher if they’d otherwise starve to death.
In the past I’ve mentioned supporting the basic income concept, but only because I don’t want poor people coming after me with pitchforks and torches. But I’m becoming convinced that that’s going to happen anyway, so screw them. I’d sooner spend my money on guns and ammunition than on supporting the genetic losers that make up the underclass. If I have to protect myself, so be it.
I just got an email accusing me of being RAC
lol Perhaps if you added some weed and long necks to the monthly supplements you’d be OK.
This is exactly what will happen when “PRCs” are formed. Monthly dole. You want real meat, eggs, milk etc. Go earn it. Or just watch you soaps and smoke weed.
There it is.
If things get that bad, we’re gonna have “…poor people coming after me with pitchforks and torches…” anyway, regardless. They won’t settle for flour, oil and salt every month. This program might work if there is actual danger of starvation during a major national catastrophe or near the end of a long slide into dystopian nightmare; they’ll have to have troops with machine guns protecting the distribution sites, as seen in the opening shots of Mogadishu in “Black Hawk Down.” But let’s hope we don’t slide that far.
I was struck by a comment some Euro bureaucrat made from the Brussels crowd recently about why it is that the swarms of immigrants to Europe from Africa and the Middle East were rioting and looting and burning stuff. She opined it was because, and I’m paraphrasing a bit here, that the Europeans hadn’t made them welcome and comfortable in their new homes, i.e., with decent housing, food and medicine, jobs, etc., etc. That’s the mindset we’re dealing with here, that I mentioned yesterday; these people think differently than we do; their thought processes are totally wack.
We have them in this country, too; I really don’t see how there’s ever gonna be any way to reason with them, as reason is known to us.
One often-overlooked advantage of maintaining a large stock of stored foods and eating routinely from those stores is that it allows you to avoid eating foods that end up being recalled
Or your entire stock of the item is on the recall list if you purchased all the items at the same time.
“Orthodox Jewish? Tough shit.”
Not only are you racist, you are clearly also anti-semitic!
I find it more interesting that you would measure the oil in litres, but the flour, salt and beans in pounds. Any particular reason?
“Any particular reason?”
Dr. Bob’s trying to cover all his bases in case UN cops show up at his new retreat digs in the mountains; he can say he’s trying.
Meanwhile, riots in Germany. Europe should get interesting real soon now.
Americans think in pounds and quarts for most stuff. The 2-liter soft drink bottle got them thinking in liters for that, although they still think in quarts for motor oil, gallons for gasoline, miles for distances, etc. Costco sells olive oil in 3-liter bottles, which is what had me thinking in liters for oil.
I was pretty much bilingual in traditional/metric from before I started elementary school, although for a while I thought in traditional and had to convert mentally to metric. But by the time I was in junior high, I was fully bilingual, not converting either to the other.
Interestingly, the mix of both has held on in some places you wouldn’t expect. For example, if you buy a telescope eyepiece, the barrel diameter will be specified in inches but the focal length in mm.
@clayton
“Oh, and make the free lunch program free for all children, regardless of means.” in case you are serious, you may not be aware that we already do this.
When a certain percentage of students are eligible for free or subsidized meals, the whole school gets them. This is supposed to keep from ‘stigmatizing’ the students. They get free breakfast too. While I don’t want any kid to go hungry and I understand that it is hard to learn when hungry, the PRIMARY responsibility for feeding their offspring lies with the PARENT or guardian and NOT the taxpayer.
Further, I don’t want MY child to eat that crap, why should I want anyone to eat it? If you don’t currently have school age kids you might not realize how bad it is. Most people think schools today are like what they experienced, only a little worse. They are not. They are completely different, and a great deal worse. Google “thanks Michelle” and look at the images. I’ve seen it with my own eyes at my child’s school.
BTW, the unsubsidized breakfast cost $0.75 and lunch is $1.50. Aftercare feeds the kids dinner for $2.00. Take out labor, distribution costs, and profit, and see how little they have left to provide the actual “food.”
I’ll keep sending my child with a lunch made from primary ingredients. I hope she’ll continue eating it despite being surrounded by kids eating the “free” lunch.
nick
Come to think of it, including an ounce or two of high-grade marijuana with the monthly dole would be a good idea. That’d increase the monthly cost by maybe $0.25 but it’d be worth the extra money.
I’ve always thought the the government should provide free or heavily-subsidized drugs like marijuana, heroin, etc. to anyone who wants them. Kind of like the British government used to do with gin. Keep the underclass drunk/stoned and they won’t cause trouble. They’ll also have many fewer children and die younger, which would be all to the good.
Government pizza kitchens. There’s your flour, salt, oil and some excess gov’t cheese. Add some sausage once in awhile and reduce the pork the government buys from pig farmers. Throw in some burritos for the beans and Bob’s everyone’s uncle.
A friend of mine many years ago (had a degree in economics but had a great little hamburger joint) used to always say the modern bread and circuses was beer and football.
“… like the British government used to do with gin.”
I’ve never heard about that. Please do tell…
Our kids are grown and gone now from the publik skool mess but I remember all too well those things, and yes indeed, it’s a LOT worse than when I was a kid in skool. Now they’re fed rubbish and indoctrinated constantly in neo-Marxist platitudes while super-PC has run amok. Ratchet that up a few notches and that’s what it’s like in the colleges now, too; the stories my next-younger brother tells me of my niece’s experiences are horrific. We pretty much have actual communists teaching in the humanities and social “sciences” now. “Moderate” teachers and professors live in constant fear and trembling lest their less-than-enthusiastic reactions be found out; actual “conservatives” are Beyond the Pale outcasts and not long for their jobs, tenure or not.
The Soviets and Red Chinese must be laughing their asses off at us now.
Hey, Dr. Bob, agreed on the free pot distributions; when I was a street cop I never once had to deal with violent situations involving pot smokers; always the drunks and coke-heads and crack numbskulls. Feed them the pot, stick them in front of their goddamned tee-vees and innernet and all will be well. Soon, the additional benefit will be that they’re way too fat to even set foot outside their domiciles, let alone cause any trouble.
Then, once their med problems increase to the point where we don’t wanna or can’t spend the money on them anymore, why, turn them over to the inner city BBQ gurus and their homemade spits. Calories galore! Price them by the pound, of course.
I had 12,560 ft2 of asphalt put down on our gravel roads at the office yesterday. Seven trucks of hot asphalt mix put down in 12 ft wide strips. Now all I need is another 10,000 ft2 and I will have all the critical areas covered. Maybe next year.
The cost was $2.20/ft2, a very good deal. I am not going to miss that 1/4 mile drive down a very dry gravel road in the middle of the summer pulling a 100 ft tail of caliche dust.
Did my neighbors help pay for the new asphalt? I did not even bother asking them, I know better. They drive on the main road getting to their properties, a constitutional right here in The Great State of Texas. Plus the farmer who built the original road back in 1960 made it a public easement.
in case you are serious, you may not be aware that we already do this.
Only if the school participates in the NSLP. Many do not. My kids never qualified in Vegas. I filled out the form every year in Middle School for grins. Denied White Rich Racist!
Also, like you, I almost always sent lunch with them. I got some Bento Box thermos’ for them with hot, cold, etc food. They always shared ’cause school lunches these days suck. I remember my grade school days where real food was served. Not skim milk, carrot sticks, and soy chicken nuggets. eww!
I had 12,560 ft2 of asphalt put down
Thanks Mr. Lynn! You probably will change the climate all by yourself with all that blacktop. Call The Goreacle! Climate Ejaculation! Make Mr. Lynn buy carbon credits! I can feel myself getting warmer already.
The Authorities have been duly notified of Mr. Lynn’s rapacious destruction of the Environment and his probable extinction of the rare Caliche Dust Mite. Additional charges are being prepared for his neglect of the proper Neighborhood Council application procedure.
” ’cause school lunches these days suck. I remember my grade school days where real food was served. ”
We always complained about it, but it was cooked onsite, you could look over the counter and see into the kitchen, and it was a damn sight healthier than the current fare.
For those w/out kids in school- our local districts, and most of them in this state, heat and assemble the meals at a central “child nutrition’ facility, and then they are hot boxed and trucked to the schools. This (and the budget) leads to the administration favoring foods that will ‘hold’ for a long time. Lots of ground protein with additives reshaped into ersatz patties or bite sized pieces. Very few primary whole foods (ie, stuff you would recognize by sight.)
nick
Love the smell of hot asphalt. Seriously. Smells like summer to me.
nick
Love the smell of hot asphalt. Seriously. Smells like summer to me.
Me too. Smells like money.
Additional charges are being prepared for his neglect of the proper Neighborhood Council application procedure.
Oh my goodness. I can see the meeting now. Ms. XXXXX would show up with her 12 gauge and smoking a doobie. Her favorite name for me is asshole.
I spent summers in college working for PennDOT, much of that laying down hot mix to fill potholes. There aren’t many more miserable jobs than walking behind a truck of hot mix when it’s 100 in the shade and you’re in the sun. I took a thermometer along one day and the air temperature at the gate of the truck, measured in the shade, was something like 140F. Our foreman had a water cooler on the back of his truck, which he’d have to fill several times a day to keep our crew of four to six hydrated. We’d commonly go through several gallons of water per day per person, along with a bunch of salt pills. I wish I were in the same physical condition now as I was 40 years ago when I was doing that.
If you haven’t already, you owe yourself at least one viewing of Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy”. Satire? Low-comedy? No! Prophecy!
.mg
Now I am wondering how long it take that new asphalt to show up on google maps?
https://www.google.com/maps/place/8653+FM+2759+Rd,+Richmond,+TX+77469
And I have just reported to Google Maps the fourth time that their pointer for my office address is wrong. Of course, the second time they placed my pointer on the railroad tracks across FM 2759. The first and third times, they placed my pointer at the neighbors house.
“Ms. XXXXX would show up with her 12 gauge and smoking a doobie. Her favorite name for me is asshole.”
Seriously?
I might like to get to know her; is she a MILF hottie?
Girls with guns. One of my personal hot buttons. I think my favorite is still this one:
http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/2014/06/26/thursday-26-june-2014/
Ms. XXXXX is around 60, looks 70, about 5 ft tall and about 4 ft wide. Wears mens overalls and carries a 12 gauge everywhere she goes. She scared the AT&T guy half to death last year by poking that 12 gauge so hard in his sternum that it left a bruise. She owns about 100,000 acres of the old family farm. Her kids and grandkids run around this place all the time. One of her grandsons has a automatic fire rifle that he shoots at least once per month next door (could be a bump gun though). Other times they are out shooting pistols or 12 gauges two or three times per week.
Now I now that the long and harsh winter is finally over here in the Land of Sugar. Just saw my first gator of the season out in the ditch on FM 2759. He? she? was about three foot long and content. 78 F and the air conditioners have started their spinups for the summer.
Sorry, my last time in a school lunchroom was more than 30 years ago.
What I want is a decent healthy breakfast/lunch for all the kids. It’s not their fault if they picked poor parents.
But hey, I am a radical. I believe that the schools should teach reading, writing, and basic math to >95% of the kids. And that reasonable accommodation should be capped at some multiple of the cost of a ‘normal’ student. And if a kid is disruptive, well, some of the kids can learn while they are gone.
Dammit, I was going to call you a racist, but someone beat me to it. Dammit!
-scratch head- What does that have to do with accusations of racism?
What I want to know is, in the event of a real bad thing ™, how do I store enough vanilla wafers to continue feeding my addition? The boxes on the shelves at my favorite food supply store only have four months on their best by date. Lots of air in those boxen. And lots of vanilla wafers.
http://www.amazon.com/Nabisco-Nilla-Wafers-15-oz/dp/B001G26NJ8/
“Ms. XXXXX is around 60, looks 70, about 5 ft tall and about 4 ft wide. Wears mens overalls and carries a 12 gauge everywhere she goes.”
Well then. Forget I said anything about MILF’s, hotness, getting to know any, etc.
You, son, live in an interesting place. Maniacal grannies with shotguns. Kidz with automatic rifles. Gators. Rattlesnakes. Illegal immigrants. And yet, there you are, strolling along like it’s a sunny morning in an English garden, only it’s the dead of night and you ain’t heeled. Unless you’ve remedied that situation recently???
I also like them Vanilla wafers. I bet Dr. Bob sez not to worry, though; four months is b.s. They last forty years. Like that manna in the wilderness.
Repack them in LDS foil-laminate Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers and they probably will be edible for 40 years.
You, son, live in an interesting place.
The Great State of Texas. ‘Nuff said.
Want a gator?
Repack them in LDS foil-laminate Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers and they probably will be edible for 40 years.
Vanilla Wafers are packed in foil-laminate pouches already. About 0.5 mm though (if that much) and no oxygen absorber.
Bob, in case you haven’t run across this site yet it’s lots of fun!
http://www.compoundchem.com/
Fred’s latest column is just amazing.
http://www.fredoneverything.net/MoreFerguson.shtml
“Ah, the joys of escalation. In Ferguson blacks are shooting policemen as others cheer. It does a curmudgeon’s soul good: Everything gets worse, the collapse continues, and unreasoning stupidity goes thundering into the future.”
“The only solution, if there is a solution, would seem to be an amicable separation. This methinks would be greatly better than the slow-motion, intensifying racial war we now see, and pretend not to see. When the races mix, there is trouble. So, don’t mix them.”
Wow.
Well, Fred’s a rayciss, of course, like Dr. Bob. And MrAtoz and me. Caint we all jus’ git along? That plaintive cry from the grave still echoes here and there. He may have been a p.o.s. at one or other times in his life, and he may have been put up to it by the media and cops then, but I believe he meant it.
Now. How to jus’ git along?
Other online friends of mine have made the same point in recent years; why not just let folks live with who they wanna live with? Isn’t secession really the best answer? Do we wanna end up like the damn Balkans or the Brit/French-drawn remapping of the Sandbox? Isn’t it time this little experiment with the Melting Pot/Gorgeous Mosiac ended? It was bloody hard enough getting various Euros to assimilate when they came over in the 17th through mid-20th centuries here. But it seems fairly clear now that some groups will absolutely never assimilate and have no intention of ever doing so.
Riddle me this: How is it western Europeans and their descendants built all this civilization, progress, liberty, etc. and yet we are loathed and despised for it?
Rather than keep whining here, how about this OFD Program:
1.) Get all our military forces out of the rest of the world right fucking now and quit messing in their business.
2.) Break up the United States of Amnesia into its logical loose confederacy of parts; let the Hispanics have their Nuevo Aztlan and the African-Americans who wish to split off the logical region for them. Politically, let southern New England hook up with NYC/Albany, NJ, Delaware, half of Maryland and Mordor. Northern New England with the Canadian Maritimes. Northern Kalifornia, Oregon and Washington with British Columbia, etc., etc.
3.) Admit that the grand business of Empire is over and threatens the whole race of homo sapiens sapiens; time to let go.
I was still thinking about taking some electronics courses at CSN in NV. But, being a RACIST!, I’d be drummed out for taking up an affirmative action spot. Even though I’d be auditing the class and paying cash. Now that higher education has deemed only WHITEY! can be racist, Fred has put forth a good solution. Of course, he’s RACIST!, so ignore him please.
Fred actually is a racist. He just doesn’t get it. Skin color has nothing to do with the problem; it’s a matter of the underclass versus decent people. Certainly blacks and latinos are disproportionately represented in the underclass, but their skin color doesn’t make them underclass.
Now you’re being silly. Those of western Europe (and particularly England and Germany) built all that, so of course the losers resent us. We and our ancestors did what they cannot do.
My “cocktail party” theory is that Western Civilization/Dead White Male Hegemony took off with the Domesday book and the recognition and identification of private property.
The Domesday Book was actually a creation of the Norman state at the time, and sought to construct an accurate rendering of every ear of corn and every straw of hay and every squeal of pig, for taxation purposes, mainly, and for the intel ops of the Norman ruling class. I hold with the old fart’s theory that Western Civ grew out of Magna Carta and then all those unbelievably splendid cathedrals. I’d give both Charlemagne and Alfred the Great lots of credit, too.
“…disproportionately represented in the underclass…”
Thus the impression most folks grow to have, even Fred, who also knows plenty of non-underclass blacks and Latinos. We got us some white underclass up here in northern New England, and right across the street and up both roads a ways, couple of miles, tops. I’d expect them to come calling in the event of a major societal upheaval but they’d be making a mistake.
I did the math, and if everyone took this dole, it would be about $57 Billion a year based on your cost, which is less than the $74 Billion spent on last year on Food Stamps, but far more than the $31 Billion spent ten years ago. Of course, everyone could get it…
I’m told I’m unusual for a middle-age white guy, but I’ve had black friends all my life, starting with Florida, a black lady who took care of me when my mom returned to work while I was still a baby. I know from personal observation over six decades that people with dark skins are no different from us pale-faces.
There are lots of good people of both colors, and lots of bad people. Ignorant people, like Fred, who think that somehow people’s characteristics are directly related to their skin colors are not thinking rationally. When I read Fred’s diatribes against blacks, I always wonder if he’d rather associate with a black engineer or scientist or with a white gang-banger. Sadly, I’m afraid Fred would choose the gang-banger.
I’m smart enough to understand that that middle-class black engineer or scientist is my natural ally–we have everything that matters in common–while the white no-class gang-banger is my natural enemy. I don’t think Fred understands that.
Middle-aged? Are you planning on living to 120?
I am concerned about Fred’s pushing apartheid in the USA. We are already trying out apartheid in the Indian reservations which seems to be going well. At the moment.
The real solution is to re-examine our entire legal system and rebase it on people actually injuring other people. If you spend your life doing drugs then that is no reason to put you in jail for 20 years (go see the sentences for crack and meth).
Likewise, if you refuse to go to school or are ejected because you cannot control yourself in school, you should not be charged with a crime:
http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/fortbend/schools/article/Black-Hispanic-students-in-Fort-Bend-ISD-more-6114535.php
However, if you hurt another person, bodily or financially, you should be thrown into the deepest, darkest, nastiest place that we can find.
BTW, several of my neighbors are black. Several others are hispanic. And several others are oriental. They are all fine people and interested in the common welfare. Actually, we all just want to be left alone to do our thing. The Land of Sugar is not majority white. Nor is Fort Bend County.
Living to? Hell, I’m planning on still being watching new episodes of Heartland when I’m 120 (and Amber is 85).
By that time, my second- and third-generation clones will have a production line to keep making more mes.
I’ll take anyone who’s middle-class or higher, regardless of skin color, sexual orientation, etc. etc. Them, I have a lot in common with.
The underclass thugs have less in common with me than would Martians. I think the progressives love them because they’ve never actually encountered one. If they did, they’d soon realize that these underclass scum are people only in the biological sense. They have nothing in common with civilized humans. They can’t be fixed.
Old age is around 70 to 80 nowadays. That is the point where modern medicine can push back most life changing events to.
One of my wife’s aunts had heart bypass surgery last Monday. She is doing well and expects to leave the hospital soon. She is 85 and her husband is 92. He is a WWII vet and still mobile.
By that time, my second- and third-generation clones will have a production line to keep making more mes.
Good luck on getting your clones to do anything in your interest. I figure that the copying errors will do a significant amount of damage. The traditional methods of getting 50% clones work much better.
you should be thrown into the deepest, darkest, nastiest place that we can find.
That would be Detroit Michigan.
The soon to be 4 year old 50% clone won’t do very much of what I want. Compared to her, I’m not a fussy eater. I think the child could out stubborn her late grandmother, a former attorney and IRS auditor.