Thanks 5P, in dark moments, a little humor is priceless. And now, I'm going to shut up and go play with my children.....
<i>"Well said austin, you obviously KNOW your stuff."</i> In all honesty, my knowledge base is narrow in scope but deep in my topics of interest. There are a lot of guys with far-wider horizons of general knowledge here than me, for sure. From late-1999 until recently my life has been dominated by research on trading, mechanical systems, discretionary methods, etc. I highly doubt there is anyone here who has spent more pure manhours trading live markets, studying charts in realtime and post-market than I have. Not to say that's all a good thing. The obsession to become proficient contributed to an unwanted divorce and host of other things missed out on along the way. Easier roads to trading success exist than my path down the school of hard knocks. Now I'm at a point where all that time (and money) invested has me trading pure price action measured on a chart, and nothing else. Zero indicators of any kind, just measuring price from different angles. It's working better than anything I've done before, and there really isn't much more I can strip away or clarify. So... I spend hours researching other fun pursuits. One of my interests is rearing = breeding localized, resistant honeybees. You wouldn't believe how geeky a bunch of redneck farmers can get over this topic. I belong to a group that literally brings in world-renowned bee experts with more PHD degrees than I have hair on my forehead, waning as that measurement may be. People literally breed queen bees via artificial insemination (grafting) with extracted bee sperm from prize drones (males) using tiny instruments under a microscope. They experiment with viral-resistant strains of bees from all over the world, recently Russian bees from Siberia. I have some of those Russian queens coming next month myself, 100% pure strain artificially bred for $100 queen plus $45 next-day air shipping from CA. All of this effort isn't done for fun & games. The big pollinators aren't happy to see their 4,000 hives colony reduced to 200 hives in three months' time. Huge money is lost, from several directions that ripples up the food chain straight to us. Hobbyists are working on the problem. I personally think it'll be resolved in time, but the cost of bee propogation is rising which will push food prices higher in even the best-case scenario Bee Happy
This sadly so true it hurts. I've had conversations with people about farmers, etc..... And they said "who needs farmers, I'll just get my food from Safeway. " Some people are too stupid to breed.
Well, that certainly seems a better pathway to success than my jack of all trades-master of none mantra......Seems like we're diametrically opposed on methodology of attacking a problem...lol...I get interested in something, find out what I need to know to satisfy my curiosity, and then move on to the next pressing question in my oh so strange little mind, but as always, its reassuring to know that there are people like yourself who have an attention span longer than that of a pica on crack...
I'm like you. I've always admired and respected guys like Austin, who can go the whole nine yards in a subject.
Austinp, Apparently you've done a lot of work trying to figure out the cause of all the bees disappearing. Have you done much research with the neonicotinic pesticides? Do you think that could be the major cause? I read that neonicotinic pesticides are shipped to 100 countries around the world. There must be some countries where it isn't shipped. Has anyone looked at those countries with neonicotinic pesticides? Are those countries without the pesticides having problems with their bees?
Fascinating article I didn't know there was such a large business in a renta-bee-pollinations. This bee issue reminds of the book Silent Spring - it has an uncany similarity to what is being forecast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring http://www.nrdc.org/health/pesticides/hcarson.asp