Recent Site Updates Posted on August 27th, 2009
I’m continuing to look at the site, over-analyze its setup, and make what I hope are improvements. I’ve added a fan page where those of you who want to stalk me can find out where else I’m publishing stuff. You’ll see that at top left. I also added some back-end things to the site so that I can better control the menu over there and so forth.
As always, feel free to give me suggestions as to how you’d like to see the site change or what kind of content you’d like me to bring. I write about a huge variety of stuff, I know, and probably hurt my own marketing by not having a distinct focus, but I’m doing pretty well just to keep the blog environmental as it is. haha
Thanks for reading!
Because You Asked, Here Are My Views Posted on July 30th, 2009
I enjoy getting emails from you all when you decide to write. I don’t publish my email, for obvious spam reasons, but you manage to find it anyway. Mostly I get messages through Facebook and Twitter, both of which I’ve linked to on my About page here on the site.
Usually, rather than leave a comment on a post, I get emails asking for a specific answer or source material for a post I’ve made. Often these are questions relating to modifications someone’s making to their own DIY project based on something I’ve posted here. I know of at least three of you that are building new raised beds this summer for next year’s garden, for instance.
That kind of thing is encouraging and I love answering and helping if I can. I also love it when you’re willing to show me what you’re doing and share how you plan to do it. The exchange of ideas is awesome.
This week, though, was very different. Because of what’s happening in Washington right now, no less than four of you have approached me in the past few days asking my views on political things: healthcare specifically.
While I’m not afraid to talk about my politics on this site, and since non-government solutions are one of the focuses of this site, I nevertheless avoid most political speech here. Well, I avoid political preaching, anyway. I post a lot about current environmental-related politics, sure, and tell you what’s going on and how to take action. I don’t preach about what I believe politically, however, beyond giving my opinion on interventions and solutions that are non-government.
One of the reasons I created this blog, besides making fun of Al Gore of course, was to emphasize something that I often see ignored on other “green” sites. Namely, how the free market and not government is best equipped to change our world for the better. Most environmental sites focus on global warming as a problem to be solved by governments and on environmental issues being something governments should “fix.”
In my view, most of our problems with the environment are expressly because the government is involved with them. If the government weren’t there, do you really think that huge mega-corps like Monsanto would even exist, let alone have near total control over our foods? Would even half the government’s agencies like the USDA and the FDA exist were it not for that?
Because government is made up of people and because people are fallible, government will always work in its self-interest, not the People’s. That is my basic view of government. Sure, some individuals may think they have our best interests at heart while working in government, but as a whole, government stifles and controls and never innovates.
All of that said, the questions I received were specifically about my views on health care “reform.” I put that word in quotes because I see little “reforming” happening and a lot of “expansion” happening instead. Just about every “problem” in this country can be boiled down to government having gotten involved as the root of the issue.
Obviously, being a free market person, I have no interest in universal healthcare or socialized medicine. I see way more problems than solutions coming out of that.
I grew up in a family that is heavily into medicine. My father is an anesthesiologist (aka one who is paid to sit and pass gas). My older brother is a dentist (he even has hairy fingers). My oldest sister is a dental hygienist (or was before marriage). My wife is a CNA, my mother-in-law is a nurse as is my sister-in-law. My brother-in-law (married to my other older sister) is a nurse as well.
I grew up in a house where modern medicine was normal. When we got sick, my dad had an injection, a pill, or something like that for it. I got stitches on the kitchen table. I learned to set bones on our animals when they got hurt, to surgically remove porcupine needles from the dog’s snout, and more. In Scouts, I got every medical-related merit badge right off the bat. Every time we slaughtered pigs, cows, etc. it was a chance for another anatomy lesson. That was my house growing up.
My total reversal and stepping away from (so-called) “modern” medical procedure has been entirely because of my over-exposure to it as a child. For my father’s generation, penicillin was the wonder drug of choice. It fixed everything. I’ve ingested pounds of cheese culture via penicillin.
I literally hate pills. Even aspirin is on my poop list. I can’t stand any of them. I don’t totally ignore all modern medicine and medical practice, of course. Much of it is actually very useful and good and is the reason our life expectancies and overall health are so good. There is plenty wrong with it too, though.
In my view, over-simplifying health care (aka “universalizing it”) will only exacerbate this problem. Consider just the FDA. I just published a video from PBS about how the FDA is basically just an official outlet of the big pharmaceutical companies. Do you think this will get better or worse when government controls (through the pocket book) all of health care?
Me either.
That, in a nutshell, is my view on health care.
Thanks to John, Kelley, Miriam, and Chantelle for the emails on this issue. You’re the reason behind this post. Ain’t you proud? haha
A Few Site Update Notes Posted on July 18th, 2009
Contemplating my next move...
Hi, everyone. Just a quick info dump about some of the changes you may have seen happen to Aaron’s EnvironMental Corner in the past few days.
First, I added a couple of links you might have noticed on the left-hand nav bar there. I added information on copyright, re-printing (posting), and on commenting rules. I’ve had to chase down a couple of site owners for reprinting my content without attribution (yep, I watch for that) and had a couple of comments that I filtered out because they were a little off-color. I decided to make it clear what the rules are for those things. I think you’ll see they’re more than fair. For the most part, any comment you want to leave that’s not obvious self-advertising and isn’t totally ugly or mean is fine with me.
I also added a central round-up page of the DIYs I’ve been (and will continue) publishing. These are popular here and are generally the most-visited pages on the site, but only while they’re “fresh.” A couple of people commented to me that they were hard to find in the site, since a category search for DIYs brings up all of them, regardless of subject. So I built a little indexed page, by category, of my do-it-yourself stuff. Let me know what you think or if you have any improvement ideas for that. I’ll keep it updated as new things are added.
Finally, I went through my blogroll and categorized sites by subject matter. Some sites fall into more than one category, so I put them in more than one and they’ll appear on more than one list as a consequence. If you think there might be a better way for me to do that, let me know.
I’ve been steadily building the site’s organization and usability. I think my posting frequency is about as often as it can get without becoming MSNBC.com or one of those cluttered conspiracy sites.
As always, your commentary and ideas are more than welcome. I’m thinking about putting together a more formalized “post exchange” setup that will work on an individual agreement basis similar to the exchange I’ve been doing with Kelly on her site MyQute.com. Let me know if you’re interested in details on how that would work.
Thanks for reading and I appreciate your visiting my little Corner of mentality on the environment.
What Do You Want Out of Aaron’s EnvironMental Corner? Posted on July 8th, 2009
OK, folks, here’s your chance to chime in on what you’d like to see more (or less) of here on Aaron’s EnvironMental Corner.
Back in June, I posted a synopsis of the kinds of things I had planned for the site in near-future subject matter. These included gardening, DIY, and other topics. So far, I’ve been using that as a template. I’m catching the gardening subjects up to where I wanted them (about 2 weeks behind my actual garden) and have put a few DIY articles up here as well.
I’ve avoided (most) politics on this site which, for those who know me, is extremely difficult for me to do. I have plenty of venues for my political thoughts, so I’ve endeavored to keep them off Aaron’s EnvironMental Corner unless they are related to environmental issues (global warming/climate change, Cash for Clunkers, that sort of thing). Even then, I’m sticking to the minimum and just going with the latest news on the topic (that isn’t mentioned in the main stream) and shying away from a full-blown expose’ as I’d prefer this blog to be more about free market environmentalism and less about the political b.s. going on.
What I want to know is whether you think I’m on the right track or if there’s something else you’d like to see.
With that in mind, I created the following poll to get your feedback. If you’d prefer to just write a missive rather than answer poll questions, I welcome your comments at the bottom of this post. You’re free to do both too, of course.
What Do You Want To See More Of On Aaron's EnvironMental Corner?
- Do It Yourself Topics (non-gardening) (0%, 0 Votes)
- Environmental Technology (0%, 0 Votes)
- Gardening (0%, 0 Votes)
- News and Politics on Environmental Issues (0%, 0 Votes)
- Pets and Animals (information) (0%, 0 Votes)
- Whatever you want, Aaron, I love you! (100%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 0
Loading ...Upcoming Topics for Aaron’s EnvironMental Corner Posted on June 22nd, 2009
This is just a short note to inform you of some of the great topics I’ll be covering over the summer here at Aaron’s EnvironMental Corner.
Gardening: I’ll be going more in-depth with gardening topics. While I started with DIY seed starters, I’ll also be going into building a raised bed, organic methods for garden care and insect control, building and maintaining a compost heap as well as other methods of composting, and many other gardening topics.
I plan to stretch myself, since I consider this blog as much a learning experience for myself as it is for you, and get into vermicomposting, hydroponics, and more–all related to getting the most out of your home-grown, healthy and organic garden foods.
Aaron and his Irish Toolbox (which is not always cooperative)
DIY Topics: A lot of DIY that maybe you don’t expect from a blog about environmental issues. Stuff like changing the oil in your car or truck, installing fencing for your pets or to keep pets and varmints out, and even lawn care and zero-scaping topics.
Pets and Animals: I love animals and am the Director of our local animal rescue (Gateway’s Needy Animals)–which is a fancy title that means “volunteer IT dude.” I have organic pet treat recipes, pet care tips for your furry friends, and probably some musings on the wonder that is the mule as well as politically-correct ways to use the word “jackass.”
News and Politics: Of course, I’ll keep covering interesting news and technology developments as well as the (usually stupid) political goings-on in the world of environmental awareness. Plus plenty of jabs at Al Gore and his minions, of course.
These are the types of things you can look forward to (or dread, it’s your pick) in upcoming installments of Aaron’s EnvironMental Corner!
