# Hey Nestor



## oldognewtrick (Jun 8, 2010)

O.K  Eskimos, I know they don't like being called Eskimos but i forget what they like to be called, do the ones who live in igloos have their igloos melt each summer? Seems that if they do, they would be the quintessential DIYers, always redoing their house. Guess they would have to do it their selves cause I doubt there are any commercial Igloos building business, or are they like the Amish and build as a community? Have you ever been in an Igloo? I always wondered about bathroom facilities, do they simply dig a hole in the ice? What if the ice freezes back before they got the sports page read?

And whats this about the polar bears leaving Manitoba? Where are they going to? Hope they don't come to Tennessee. We have enough aliens here now. 

Oh well just wondering...


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## TxBuilder (Jun 9, 2010)

Inuit. The rest I'm going to leave to Nestor. I did a Fifth grade history report on the Igloo, so what ever he's wrong about I will correct.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 9, 2010)

Oldog/Newtrick:

       No, I think the Inuit have house insurance to cover them if their igloos melt.  And, of course, the policy would cover any water damage to the igloo from the melt water just as the fire insurance policy on your house covers water damage caused by putting the fire out.    I think All State offers a fire insurance policy on igloos as well.

     I've never been in an igloo, but I'm told that they're surprisingly warm inside.  I guess the reason why is that snow is a very good insulator.  Hard, clear ice is a lousy insulator, but igloos are made from hard packed snow; the white opaque stuff.  And that kind of snow has an awful lot of air inside it, which I guess is why it works well as an insulator.

Can't say about the washroom facilities in an igloo, but I expect it's basically an outhouse without any wood.


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## oldognewtrick (Jun 10, 2010)

Ok, but where are the Polar bears going? I heard they are leaving Manitoba.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 11, 2010)

Where are the polar bears going?  They're basically going extinct.  And the cause is global warming.

Polar bears spend most of their lives on the ice up north.  They hunt seals by digging a hole in shallow ice with their sharp claws and waiting patiently for a seal to come up through that hole for a breath of air.  When one does, they quickly grab the seal and pull him out of the water for dinner.  How the polar bears know where to dig their holes is something that still isn't understood, but they are good swimmers and they learn where the fish are in their area of the arctic ocean.  Since seals eat fish, the polar bears presumably dig holes where they think seals will be feeding on fish.  This method of hunting is the normal way that polar bears feed themselves and their cubs.  If this method fails, a hungry polar bear will chase down a person for dinner.  They are the only bear that will hunt people.

The problem is that with global warming, the ice in the arctic is disappearing, and in open water a seal can swim circles around a polar bear.  Consequently, the method that these bears have relied on to survive in the north is gradually becoming impossible for them to use.  There are still plenty of seals, but polar bears simply cannot catch them in open water.

So, as global warming continues, and the arctic ice melts, the polar bear's only means of feeding themselves will disappear, and these bears will gradually become extinct through starvation.  It's a tragedy, but there simply is no alternative to continued global warming over the forseeable future, and that's what's making the ice disappear.  Some people have suggested just plain outright leaving meat out for the polar bears to eat, but that's not a good solution either.  You'd just encourage the bears to stay in areas where the food is distributed, and if that's close to where people live, then there's going to be human/polar bear encounters that'll result in dead people and pets.  And, of course, polar bears are very territorial, and they'll be fighting each other because they'll all "claim" the area where the food is distributed as their own.  So, only the strongest polar bears will get the food, and will chase the others away.

I expect there will be polar bears in zedoos, though.  The Winnipeg Zedoo had a polar bear by the name of Debbie who was over 42 years old when she died a year or two ago now.  Debbie was well known in Winnipeg because most of the people in Winnipeg went to see her many times as they were growing up, so most of the people in Winnipeg knew who Debbie the polar bear was.  When Debbie died there was a memorial service for her at the Winnipeg Zoo, and they raised money for the service by selling stuff that people donated (kinda like an auction).

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/11/18/debby-bear.html

      My oldest sister makes quilts for a hobby, and she made a "Debbie" quilt in a polar bear theme and donated it to the Zoo to raise money for Debbie's cremation.  (My sister is a social worker and runs a pet loss support group for people that are mourning the loss of animals (horses and dogs, mostly) and she knows some of the people that work at the Zoo (like Gord Glover) and in the Winnipeg Police and locla rural RCMP through that group.  The policemen that work with trained dogs actually live with their dogs as pets and become very attached to them.  And, it turns out that it's the strength of the emotional connection a person has that determines the amount they grieve when that connection is broken, not what the emotional connection was with.  Obviously, a strong emotional bond will develop between a policeman and a dog that works with him and might have saved his life.  People will often grieve more over the loss of a pet that they had a strong emotional connection with than they will over the death of a close relative they haven't seen for years.)  Anyhow, my sister knew several people at the Zoo, and the quilt she made for Debbie sold for $250.

     The polar bear exhibit at the Winnipeg Zoo is one of the prime attractions in our zoo because unlike most of the animals, the polar bears are active in the Winter, so it's one of the few things that you can do outside in Winnipeg in winter.  During the summer polar bears just lie around in shady spots and sleep, but during the winter you can watch them swim and often the young ones will play fight with each other.

Anyhow, it's kinda sad, but there doesn't seem to be any good solution to the problem.  It's not just Manitoba that the polar bears are disappearing from, they're basically disappearing from everywhere.  As the polar bears have progressively more difficulty feeding themselves in the wild, they come further south and end up scavanging in the garbage dumps of small towns in the north like Churchill.  And, that's very dangerous because they will attack people and dogs if they're hungry enough.  The RCMP trap polar bears that come into small towns in search of food, and release them back into the wild, but sometimes polar bears will get into the habit of scavanging for food in people's garbage and they have to be destroyed because they present a danger to the people living in those small towns.


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## oldognewtrick (Jun 12, 2010)

Nestor, I did not know that, interesting.


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## inspectorD (Jun 12, 2010)

wait? There are no southern cap polar bears? and if there are ...do they listen to Jimmy Buffet...or are we the buffet?? I'm still confused, I only thought the ice was melting in my glass....and don't grizzlies eat folks too??


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 12, 2010)

Grizzlies will maul a person if they see them as a threat.  Or, if you turn and run from a grizzly bear, it will instinctively give chase and maul you when it catches you.  But even if a grizzly bear mauls you to death, it will leave your dead body alone.  It won't eat it.

A hungry polar bear will hunt down a person and eat the body after it kills them.  It will intentionally kill a person to make a meal out of them.  No other bear will do that.


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## oldognewtrick (Jun 12, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> Grizzlies will maul a person if they see them as a threat.  Or, if you turn and run from a grizzly bear, QUOTE]
> 
> Reminds me of the story about the 2 guys who were out hiking and ran up on a charging bear, the one fellow stopped and started to tie his sneakers a little tighter. The other guy says you can't outrun that bear and the first guys says "I don't have to out run the bear... just you."
> 
> Always go hiking with a friend.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 13, 2010)

oldog/newtrick said:


> Always go hiking with a friend.



Preferably a slow friend? 

Seriously, if you do hike, remember to talk loud, sing or whistle when you hike.  Bears will try to avoid contact with people, and if they hear you coming, they'll get out of the way.  And, that's best for all concerned.


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## TxBuilder (Jun 17, 2010)

I saw a story not to long ago that as polar bears are making there way down they are breeding with grizzly bears and making some pretty massive pretty aggressive offspring.

Grizzly

Here's something about it.


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## granite-girl (Jun 18, 2010)

Wow Nestor -that's very interesting.  You're always good for some education during my day.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 18, 2010)

TxBuilder:
     Haven't been on lately cuz I've been having computer problems.

     That's interesting about the hybrids.  I'd really like to see the Polar bears survive somehow.  The polar bear has come to represent the Arctic.  Whales, seals and rabbits live everywhere.  Carribou also live in the north, but they haven't come to represent the Arctic like the polar bear.  About the only animal that provides the same mental imagery as the polar bear would be the Husky dogs.  But, the Arctic is white.  White snow, white iceburgs, white sky.  And polar bears have white fur.  They are the natural representatives of the Arctic.  I'd like them to survive somehow.  But, if I had my way, lots of things would be different, not just the plight of the polar bear.







A polar bear playing with a dog.

Granite-girl:
     Thanks for taking the time to read my posts.


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## TxBuilder (Jun 18, 2010)

Sorry you are having issues, if you need a hand or think I might be able to help private message me and I'll see what I can do to help.

I'm with you on the polar bear. I think it would be nice if my grand kids would be able to see them in the wild if they wanted, but that probably won't happen.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 18, 2010)

TxBuilder said:


> Sorry you are having issues, if you need a hand or think I might be able to help private message me and I'll see what I can do to help.



I have two computers connected with a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse switch) so that I can use two computers simultaneously from the same workstation.  I use my old eMachines 500 mHz Pentium III for everything internet, and I use an IBM Pentium IV for my business.  That way I never get a virus on my business computer, and that's important cuz I don't want to end up losing any business related files.

I have a simple but effective way of fixing any kind of virus, registry problem or anything on my internet computer.  I simply format the hard drive and re-load Windows XP and Internet Explorer.  There hasn't been a virus or spyware program written yet that can live through a low level format.



> I'm with you on the polar bear. I think it would be nice if my grand kids would be able to see them in the wild if they wanted, but that probably won't happen.



Well, you have to go pretty far off the well beaten path to see polar bears in the wild, so most people see them in zoos.  Still, if they're going to go extinct, I'd rather they survived in zoos than not at all.  Who knows, maybe in the future they can be reintroduced into the arctic a hundred years from now when we all have electric cars and global warming reverses.


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## oldognewtrick (Jun 18, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> Who knows, maybe in the future they can be reintroduced into the arctic a hundred years from now when we all have electric guitars and man made global warming has been proven to be a myth.




There fixed it for ya.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 18, 2010)

Olddog/NewTrick: 

I dunno, I guess I kinda consider that to be the Ostrich method of dealing with problems.  Just stick your head in the sand and the problem goes away.  Outta sight, outta mind.

The way I look at it, we have to move to renewable energy at some point anyway, why not do it sooner than later.  The worst that can happen is that we're wrong about global warming, (cuz it turns out to be a natural cycle) and so we end up being ahead of the game by a few decades.  That's hardly a loss.

The way I see it, conventional oil is going to keep becoming harder to find and more expensive to produce.  And you can see for yourself that producing it from offshore drilling rigs isn't an answer.  BP just spilled a few million barrels in the Gulf of Mexico, and you can be pretty sure that the people down there are just beginning to see the environmental disaster that's going to unfold over the coming months.  Why not drop the whole debate about what's happening and why and start developing green energy now?  It really doesn't matter if global warming is real or man made, it doesn't alter the fact that our planet will run out of oil at some point, so why drag our heels about switching over to a sustainable alternative.

Why don't we start seeing if we can produce vegetable oils from algae, and start spending some tax dollars researching ways to make cellulostic ethanol so that all of the biomass that gets plowed under or burned or composted or ground up to make particle board can be used to make ethanol.  We still need conventional oil for ships and planes and trains and large trucks that drive across the country... but most of us who live in cities drive less than 20 miles per day, and we could do that with hybrid cars.  A hybrid doesn't start to burn gas until the batteries are dead, and that's about 40 miles, which is way more than most of us need to drive in a typical day.

I guess I just don't see the point in debating.  Why not start switching to renewable energy sources while we still have oil to fall back on.  Why wait until the situation gets progressively more desperate and we HAVE to change.  It just seems more sensible to start spending money on research to develop alternative sources for the same TYPES of fuel we're already using, but from carbon-neutral sources, like plants.

(Manitoba's polar bears thank you for buying a hybrid car.)


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## oldognewtrick (Jun 18, 2010)

You are right about how slow we evolve as man.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 19, 2010)

I think if we had evolved from bees or ants instead of apes, we'd all be working toward goals that are in the best interest of the entire species.  We'd collectively develop renewable sources of energy and to find ways to live within our means so that we can preserve this planet and pass it down to our children in the same condition it was when we took over stewardship of it.  Bees and ants know how to work together for the common good.  This is where we could really benefit from having some bee or ant in our evolutionary ancestry instead of ape.


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## oldognewtrick (Jun 20, 2010)

See heres where we disagree, you make the assumption we have evolved. Well I'd like to say that we have nicer caves, better clothes, more creature comforts but progress as a species? Not much. You give us to much credit. Besides what is the biggest problem an ape faces? That dang baboon stealing my stash of bananas? Mrs Ape running off with the lawn boy monkey? Kids flunking out of vine swinging school?

oh, its the extinction thing again.....


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 20, 2010)

Point well made.

We humans have always faced extinction from one threat or another.  If it wasn't a different tribe wanting to bash our skulls in with rocks it was the Soviet bear wanting to bash our skulls in with nuclear tipped missiles.  If it wasn't famine because the rains didn't come and the watering hole was dry, it was a plague that swept across the known world killing us in a matter of days.  The constant threat of extinction is something we humans have grown accustomed to living with.  Global warming and nuclear terrorism will just have to stand in line and take their turn at killing us off, just like all the other perils we've faced.

Iran developing nuclear weapons and the Gulf oil spill almost seem uplifting when viewed in that light.


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## granite-girl (Jun 21, 2010)

> Why not drop the whole debate about what's happening and why and start developing green energy now? It really doesn't matter if global warming is real or man made, it doesn't alter the fact that our planet will run out of oil at some point, so why drag our heels about switching over to a sustainable alternative


.

I think that's already a given, I think there's lots of research/knowledge/availability out there.  It's just getting around the oil lobbyist to get something done!  They're out there holding all of that hostage to sell more gasoline to the poor people who can't do or don't know anything different. Everybody! And they are pretty rich & powerful....
 Not to get all political- sorry !


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## TxBuilder (Jun 21, 2010)

Human evolution lies on our use of tool that has progressed to technology. It's evolution based on the perception that we have to have the mental capacity to create use and maintain these tools. We have essentially reached the pinnacle of development with the exception of what we now have to weed out (cancer, idiocy, of recessive gene patterns) in order to advance further.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 22, 2010)

Well, I think for the longest time anthropologists used "tool making" as gauge to differentiate between "man" and "animals", but we've since learned that many animals fashion simple tools.  Apes have been seen to use thin sticks to fish ants out of an ant hill, for example.  Some birds fashion leaves in a particular way to dig insects out of holes in a tree trunk.  Dolphins will exhale slowly while swimming in a circle to fool the fish inside the circle that they're being coraled into a "net".  Other dolphins wait outside the circle for the fish try to jump out of the "net" as they're easier for a waiting dolphin to catch while they're in the air.  And, killer whales have been observed swimming in unison to cause small ice flows to tip over and spill the seals on them into the water (whereupon the killer whales feed on the seals).  So, I think relying on tool making as a measure of intelligence has problems as the above examples show tool making by birds and some imaginitive thinking by enterprising dolphins and killer whales.

I just think that we should be trying harder than we are to break our addiction to crude oil.  The way I look at it:  "The more you look, the more you find."  That's true with crude oil, but it's also true for all the other forms of energy, some of which we undoubtedly haven't even discovered yet.  Why wait until we're in panic mode to look for, develop and benefit from other forms of energy.  Isn't it more intelligent to do that now while we still have crude oil to sustain us?


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## TxBuilder (Jun 22, 2010)

I think there is a world of difference between animals tool (stick and rocks) and ours (computers, bombs.).


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 22, 2010)

So, where do we draw the line?

Unmodified sticks and unmodified rocks = animal

Modified sticks and modified rocks = early hominid
?


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## TxBuilder (Jun 23, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> So, where do we draw the line?
> 
> Unmodified sticks and unmodified rocks = animal
> 
> ...



We draw the line at complexity and intent. Not a simple machine you plan on using in the future? Human. Stick you are going to use to eat dinner? Animal and human (I love chopsticks). The point is this. If any one of those animals could progress their tool I would say that is evolution as well. At least evolution of ideas, which is necessary to understanding and competing in complex cultures.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 24, 2010)

I just think that we really need to look after this beautiful little rock we live on because it's the only place we have to live.

If we kill this planet, we die with it.  And, we have the capacity to wreck it's atmosphere, to fish it's oceans empty, to spread radioactive material over much of it's surface and to send it's climate spiraling out of control.

Let's not sink our own ship.


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## TxBuilder (Jun 24, 2010)

I'm with you.


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