Michael Cox

Nice work! this is exactly the kind of effort that brought us so many of the modern species that we depend on - the efforts of the old school naturalists to get out in nature, to pay attention, and to collect interesting specimens.

I'm not currently placed to be able to join in on such a project - not least because I don't live in the US and shipping seeds can be problematic. I do hope you find some more people to get involved with you, and maybe get some more collected lines to increase the genetic diversity of your collection.

There is an excellent book that covers the thorny issues related to finding fair taxation schemes.

A Fine Mess

It is a surprisingly enjoyable read, covers how we ended up with the crazy taxation systems we currently have, and what we might do about them. I can't remember if road tax specifically was covered, but it is comparable to many other issues in there.

It's been a long time since I have read it, but one of the principles that comes up repeatedly is that taxation should be a low rate, spread over a wide base.

Every time an exemption is made - no matter how "fair" it appears (eg electric vehicles don't pay fuel tax) - the end result is that the tax burden of spread over few people, so the rates have to go up. As go up more people are driven to lobby for exemptions so the base is narrowed further and the rates rise... eventually the whole system collapses as the rates become so high on so few people as to be unsustainable.

The book looks primarily at the US, which has a particularly messy taxation system, but the lessons learned are universal.

There is a genuine practical question around this that all governments will need to get to grips with. The move towards vehicles being electric is happening and will continue to happen without government mandate because they are the most cost effective option for the vast majority of cases. That might take longer in the US as I believe that your fuel prices tend to be lower on the whole than say Europe, but it will come.

Most governments have used a combination of fuel taxes and vehicle taxes to pay the upkeep of the roads, and generally electric vehicles apply as much wear-and-tear to the road network as petrol vehicles. So how will roads be maintained as the proportion of electric vehicles continues to increase?

Paying for road through taxing the fuel used makes sense - fuel use is in proportion to the miles driven, and thus to the wear your vehicle does to the road. It also incentivises good practices like selecting more fuel efficient vehicles and driving more economically. With electric vehicles it is harder to make that link between consumption of fuel and taxation. In the most extreme case you may be charging your car entirely from your own solar cells for example, and so not participate in a fueling system that can be taxed... but still making use of the roads.

So when looking at a question like this, I would push it back to the person and say "What do you think is a fair way for you to contribute to the road system you are making use of?"

At that point we can talk practicalities - like should it be through a vehicle tax? based on mileage (what about if my vehicle is used on my own land most of the time, and a small % on the national roads?)? Should every car have a permanent GPS tracker that monitors milage on the road system and sends you a monthly tax bill, effectively turning every road into a pay-per-use toll road (this one has surprising advantages - you could eg display the toll rate in real time, and it could vary based on time of day to encourage people to avoid periods of high traffic or certain sections of the road system). There is no clean answer. Any proposal will have downsides and make someone unhappy. But a solution is needed.

We said a last goodbye to our beloved elderly dog last week. He was over 14 years old and had a wonderful life with us. He was our first pet, and first thing we committed to as a couple when we were newly married. We are all, obviously absolutely devastated. I've got two rather fragile boys at home now, and my wife is in pieces. He was put to sleep at home following heart failure.

We are slowly pulling ourselves back together, but so many pieces of our daily lives revolved around him. Cat was invariably the one who fed him - the first morning she came downstairs and he wasn't waiting to be let out.  He used to get to lick out leftovers from our plates (especially my fussy 7yo) - day 2 I found my 7yo had put down his plate like normal without thinking about it.

It sucks.

But on the other side, it also helps us remember how wonderful the people around us are. I've had so many hugs from friends at work over the past week. People stopping by my classroom to check on me. A mate changed his plans so we could steal an hour together in the day. Not all the hugs have been helpful - making me cry 10 seconds before I need to walk in and teach maths to a room full of 13 years old is not ideal - but every one has been welcome and appreciated.

I've been trying to do my best helping the boys navigate their feelings. 7yo was trying to be brave, pull himself together and not think about it... we had a heart to heart cuddled up on the sofa and I had to tell him that he is allowed to be sad, and allowed to cry if he needs.

We made it out of the house on Sunday together and had a gentle evening with friends. It felt like a first step towards being normal again.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm rambling. Just keep being wonderful people to each other. I needed it this week, and it really helped.

I'm a union rep at work. A lot of what I do in that role involves negotiation of some sort.

I would argue that I have become pretty good at it, and had some substantial wins as a result, largely because I approach matters in a very reasonable way. Try to understand what both sides want to achieve, and cut the emotion out of the situation. It also helps to be really really well prepared.

If you can't justify to yourself that what you are asking for is reasonable then you won't be able to convince anyone else either. Conversely, if the otherside is being unreasonable than shining light on that goes a long way to strengthening your position.

I'd also add that big wins follow more easily after smaller ones. In a long term relationship (friends, spouse, family, employer etc...) you have many opportunities to practice the process of negotiation so that both sides get comfortable with how it works. Then when bigger issues come up that need Negotiation (with a big N) you have been through the dance before.

Edit: Looks like my attempt at sarcasm landed badly. I was trying to highlight that such a plan would both be unwelcome by the Canadians and - for any hope at a stable union in the longer term - would depend on appropriate representation. The consequences of such a proposal would reduce the proportion of votes that the republicans receive.

Trump’s proposal would be hugely damaging to his own party’s interests if there were ever a circumstance where it came to pass.

Clearly therefore Trump does not actually want to fold Canada into the USA - he has some other agenda, and is using this political posturing to apply pressure.


As an outsider to this situation it all just looks terribly silly.

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Jay Angler wrote:For anyone who has been following US politics, Mr. Trump seems to think Canada should be the 51 State.

I think it's a great idea. Obviously Canada would need appropriate representation in Government, so it wouldn't be the 51st state... more like states 51 through 63 (10 existing provinces and 3 territories). I wonder how favourably the citizens of those 13 new states would feel towards Trump and the Republican Party?

(Hint - a population that has been reluctantly annexed by the Republicans, and already leans considerably more left than the general population of the USA is unlikely to be supportive of the Republicans. The end result would be the Republicans as they are now never seeing power again.)

There are off-the-shelf rocket cook stoves that would be perfect for this.

Amazon link to an example - I'm not recommending this particular model, but this is very similar to the one I have (although I got mine at a fraction of the price many years ago).

I have a model somewhat similar to this for camping and I have cooked breakfast - egg and bacon rolls - for 50 people on a pair of them. They require a large supply of dry (essential) sticks, or better still seasoned firewood split down to kindling size. They are very rockety, throwing out a LOT of heat. The fire requires continual tending - the sticks burn through very fast and need monitoring to maintain a somewhat steady heat. That may or may not be suitable for sap boiling, I've no direct experience of the maple syrup making side. It can make something like frying eggs pretty tricky.

My instinct is that it would be good to have a stove of some sort that needs less regular feeding, and can take larger feedstock - even if it is slightly less optimal in terms of efficiency of combustion. Adapting some kind of batch rocket burner might be easier from a labour point of view.

I have planted comfrey at home and at my in-laws place.

At home we have thin soil on well draining chalk. The soil tend to get dry in summer. The comfrey grows, but does not thrive. I do get to cut it typically once per year as mulch but don't get a large enough quantity to use elsewhere. Where it gets crowded by other plants it tends to die out after a year or so. It is far from being a thug under these conditions.

At my in-laws the conditions are very different. They are on low lying flat land with deep silty soil and high year round rainfall. The water table is at most 18 inches below the surface and stays moist even into summer. Under those conditions comfrey is amazing! It grows to 5ft high over a matter of weeks. It protects and nourishes the soil around the fruit trees. It makes huge amounts of biomass for mulching. The trees it is planted around thrive and crop really really well.

I suspect that if I were able to consistently irrigate my comfrey at home that it would do better, but under the conditions I have it is lacklustre.

We have about a dozen, maybe more. Unfortunately most of them are apples planted on really dwarfing rootstocks (not my choice!) - either on the property when we arrived, gifts, or stuff my mother has impulse bought. We get some fruit each year, but no where near the amount we "should" be able to produce. The dwarfing rootstocks don't do well on our shallow chalk soils, especially when planted into meadows. I think they would do better if the grass were removed and the area totally mulched, but the workload for that is too much for us at present. I'm working towards getting more full size trees planted, but that is a multi-year project.

I'm on the other side of this discussion personally.

A candle flame produces a tiny amount of heat. I've seen it claimed before that it produces much more heat energy in these "candle heaters" which is chemically and physically impossible. It's plausible that we experience that heat differently - a block of ceramic radiating infrared may make someone sitting very close feel different than that equivalent amount of energy going to heat the air directly. But these are very short range effects, more akin to using a personal electrically heated rug than to heating a space like a room.

When fuel prices were astronomically high in the early days of the Ukraine war my facebook feed was full of influencer types trying to persuade people that these things were a cheap alternative to running your whole home heating - a pretty dangerous claim in the case of vulnerable older people for whom a cold home is a genuine health risk. And a claim that was clearly being made by young comfortably well off people who have never needed to worry about heating their homes in the first place, and had certainly never tried to use a single candle to replace their home heating.

Bottom line - I see little harm in these provided they are used properly and the limitations are understood. Specifically:

Ensure that the ceramic does not interfere with the clean burning of the flame. If you see soot building up after a period of use then your ceramic is too close to the flame.

Don't depend on these to heat enclosed spaces - eg cars, camper vans, tents... They are an open flame with no dedicated air supply so there is a hypothetical risk of carbon monoxide build up. But that risk should be no worse than an equivalent candle used for light, provided the flame is allowed to burn cleanly.