Thursday, February 10. 2011
A seasonal re-post -
Interesting bird, the Snow Goose. For  one thing, it comes in a blue
and white form, and all sorts of intermediate forms, so was long thought to be two species. For another, its population has boomed in recent years such that it is destroying its tundra nesting areas, and so the wildlife managers are essentially begging people to shoot them. They were scarce in the 1970s.
There is almost no real limit on these birds, and it is now legal to use electronic calls to try to bring them into your field decoy spread during the spring Snow Goose season in the midwest. However, as it turns out, hunting makes no dent in their numbers.
When a flock of 100 or 1000 of them descend over your blind into your field decoys on a frigid dawn, it's one hell of an adrenaline rush and one hell of a shooting experience. A literal "blast," and you cannot reload your auto fast enough to keep up with the action of these determined birds who can, at times, seem quite undeterred by the sound of shotgun fire. They go down very easily, compared to Canadas which can sometimes coast or flap for a quarter mile with a fatal wound, which gives a retriever - or a fellow - a good work out.
We say "They go down like a prom dress."
Our Brit cousins would love this shooting - they have, alas, nothing comparable for fun. Neither prom dresses nor Snow Geese. Our good pal Mr. Free Market would have the time of his life.
When 5000 of them decide to chose the seemingly identical barley field adjacent to the one you happen to be in for brainless goose reasons, it is a deeply frustrating experience and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.
A northern Canadian nester, this medium-sized honker is highly migratory across the US, especially in the Central Flyway. It is not unusual, these days, to see them flying over Vermont ski slopes in winter, or on Long Island potato fields.
The causes of the potentially self-destructive population boom are unclear, but may have to do with changes in the agricultural lands on which they winter. I wish I had a decent digital image of the size of the flocks of these birds, capable of truly blocking out the sun, but my best shots are from my pre-digital era, a few years ago. Beautiful, and awe-inspiring but, according to the biologists, a big problem too. They could be wrong; it might just be a natural boom and bust cycle like the housing market.
Being game birds, a word is always in order on cooking, since you must eat what you kill. These geese do not hold a candle to the delectable Canada Goose. The tough breast is best stewed, or crock-potted, and can be quite fine in a cassoulet. But anything is good in a cassoulet on a cold snowy, blowy winter evening, with crunchy garlic toast and a few bottles of Cote Roti and a mountain of powerful stinky French cheeses on the side.
More about Snow Goose at CLO, whence the photo, here.
Our old post on Cassoulet is lost for the moment. Good hearty peasant food, best made with game sausage and game meat of any sort. We once made one with venison sausage, wild boar, and Snow Goose breast.
 Dylan to share Grammy stage with Mumford, Avett Brothers
Does an academic dare come out of the (political) closet?
They shouldn't hide their real identities. But if they are all weenies, they could always play the victim card and scream "McCarthyism."
Am Thinker: Why Can't My Health Insurance Be Like My Car Insurance?
The Weather Isn't Getting Weirder - The latest research belies the idea that storms are getting more extreme.
It's just getting reported more hysterically. Weather sells soap.
Homeowners face 'new normal' in housing bust
If you bought before the bubble, you're doing just fine. Nationally, housing prices are now pretty much back to the historic trend line - thanks to a full inventory.
Malanga: Rhode Island: A Fiscal Mess Few Care About
Between chronic Dem control, unions, the Mob, and corruption, rational Rhode Island governance seems like a lost cause
Four Reasons Why Big Government Is Bad Government (h/t Linkiest)
Wednesday, February 9. 2011
Anti-multiculturalism is going mainstream, at NRO. It's about time the pols and intelligentsia caught up with the common sense, experience, and wisdom of the people.
Dr. Merc had a movie to post, but I think he wants it in tomorrow's edition. Woops, wrong about that. Anyway, it brought to mind a movie that Mrs. BD has watched three times in the past two weeks: A Woman in Berlin (2009).
The Russian invasion and occupation of Berlin in 1945. We didn't read the book. It's a serious movie, and a true story written by "Anonymous." War is hell.
Winter is made for outdoor fun of the strenuous type. I call the cold "God's air conditioning." Time to do things that make you sweat like a pig when it's cold as hell.
When the kids were young, we focused on family skating, skiing and sledding. Wonderful times, and all of my kids have mastered these things while accumulating the scars and broken bones that are an essential part of a vigorous childhood. My family does vigor, avoids "relaxation" - our theory is that you can lie around and relax when you're dead.
I used to like a ten mile road run in the morning in 10 degrees, but I don't do that anymore even though I should. (I prefer my wake-up cigar and a large Dunkin.) My relatives and friends like Paddle, cross-country skiing, Frostbiting, snow-shoeing, and skiing of course. My elderly Mom still likes to get her cross-country skis on and go out in the woods and hills and fields for a couple of hours in 10 degrees (F). Never was a wimp. She does appreciate a hot toddy on her return, a warm fire, and somebody to listen to her tell what she saw ("I saw a Goshawk on the ridges and flushed a grouse out of the briars by the river. Bear tracks on the mountain trail.").
I told her we might find her dead frozen body someday halfway up Tim's Mountain, and she said that was OK with her.
What do you like to do for outdoor cold-weather fun?
Tuesday, February 8. 2011
That's the title of an opus by Vanderleun. (Bosch's image from his post which I am pleased to add to my image library.) He says:
These days it would seem that the 7 deadly sins are now the 7 cardinal virtues of the progressive left.
I had been having similar thoughts lately, especially regarding government avarice. It's a topsy-turvy world we live in, with Wonderland twists of language and meaning. Glad he wrote the piece.
 I'm sure readers have surmised that we are not big on fake things here at Maggie's Farm. We are sort of stuck on that 1960s authenticity thing.
However, we will make an exception for a few fake candles. Mrs. BD used them over the holidays for decorating tables and pine-strewn mantles, and I had to confess that they were quite pleasant and realistic with a waxy look and feel, and have the benefit of not burning down your house on Christmas Eve while you are busy carving the goose.
Real is better, but there's a role for these fake things. They seem to come in all shapes.
I think she got her collection of them at Bed Bath and Beyond the Budget, but they can be found all over the internet now.
Maine Family Robinson: 10 Luxuries We Don't Do Without
NYT: Social Scientist Sees Bias Within:
Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”
Egypt Exposes Media Hypocrisy
The Apostate - Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology. (h/t, Lucianne)
Rape flourishes in rubble of Haitian earthquake.
No functioning government, no functioning police force, no sanitation, crime rampant, no jobs, Baby Doc back and Aristide returning. What could go wrong?
Repubs: Are We Cutting Enough?
Too much college, and no skills:
The shortage of skilled workers is the No. 1 or No. 2 hiring challenge in six of the 10 biggest economies, Manpower found in a recent survey of 35,000 employers. Skilled trades were the top area of shortage in 10 of 17 European countries…
Apple CEO Steve Jobs on why dropping out of college was one of the best decisions he ever made.
Monday, February 7. 2011
I don't recall doing anything to change my camera settings, but I guess I did. Perhaps I can term this my brief Ohio Highlands Blue Period and try to make an artistic virtue out of a tech accident:
In the end, Gwynnie kindly managed to salvage some of my pics, and to restore the world to its proper tones:
A few more below the fold -
Continue reading "My Blue Period of Ohio pics"
God knows how many lawyers have built their retirements in West Palm Beach or "the Tampa area" on slip 'n fall cases in New York City. It's a major industry there, feeding mostly off the deep pockets of the city government. They settle promptly.
There is an entire category of inattentive person which seems to be slip and trip-prone. Perhaps their moms never told them "Watch what you're doing." They trip over curbstones. The overlap of that set of people with the set of greedy litigious persons are the key to the jackpot for both the lawyers and for the lucky jerk who didn't watch where he was going and has the personality type to cash in.
In the past, such people would win the Darwin Prize which eliminates their genes from the gene pool, but, in the new world, they win the big bucks.
Winter must be a windfall for these lawyers. Everybody slips on ice, and everybody knows that Gomers Go To Ground.
Subject comes up because New York City's cool Highline, about which we posted in the fall, looks to be a fruitful new source of lawsuits.
Admittedly the design is meant to be as much to invent an aesthetic rus in urba experience rather than a practical one, but how could anybody design anything in which some litigious person might not be able to find something to trip over? Aren't there rocks to trip over in Central Park? There are rocks and roots and ice all over my town paths where I like to take my dog - each one, I would suppose, with dollar signs all over it. I have slipped and tripped and fallen many times in my life, broke an arm, tore a shoulder to shreds, etc., and it never occurred to me to sue anybody.
I thought the litigation risk of the High Line would be drunks falling off the sides. Maybe I am out of sync with this new way of life. How do you design a litigation-proof anything other than a padded cell?
Perhaps NYC needs "Walk at Your Own Risk" signs (see Ski at your own risk).
Chart below via Pethokoukis:
Am Thinker: classroom discipline
George Soros, Enemy of the State
AOL to buy Maggie's Farm HuffPo for $315 million
EPA to Regulate Dairy Milk Spills as per Oil Spills
Follow the (green) money: Gore Launches $500M 'Green' Asian Fund
BROTHERHOOD DUMPS EL BARADEI; EL BARADEI DUMPS PEACE TREATY WITH ISRAEL
Women in the Cairo Street Scenes: a Troubling Photo Essay
Progressive Scotland: Anger as serial offenders are only sent to prison after clocking up 40 crimes
Cool: A shooting range in the West Side of Manhattan
Krauthammer brings Godzilla into the discussion
Obama invokes religious themes as 2012 campaign nears
Uncontacted peoples in Peru
James May takes a ride in a U2
What school vouchers have bought for my family
Krugman blames Egypt on global warming
Good, at Insty:
MORE ON THE FAILURE OF STATE MULTICULTURALISM. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are basically unemployable in productive fields have chosen it as their rice bowl.
But Nick Cohen writes in The Guardian that appeasement may be over. “I am not sure the prime minister understands that he is taking on a sensibility as much as a political platform. Because Britain was never invaded by the Nazis, and never suffered from any of the other versions of 20th-century tyranny, there is an unforgivable frivolity about our dealings with totalitarianism. Dilettante bureaucrats, journalists and intellectuals play with extremists and their ideas with the insouciance of men and women who know that they will never have to suffer the consequences of coping with extremists in power. The best gift the British can give the world in this moment of crisis is to imitate the crowds in North Africa and say enough of all of that. It is time to break away from a shameful past.”
Drudge amusingly juxtaposes:
White House announces Super Bowl menu: 'Bratwurst, Kielbasa, Cheeseburgers, Deep Dish Pizza, Buffalo Wings, German Potato Salad, Twice Baked Potatoes, Potato ChipS, Pretzels, Chips and Dips, Salad, Ice Cream'...
RESTAURANT NUTRITION DRAWS FOCUS OF FIRST LADY...
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Back last night from a quick visit to a snowy and frigid central Ohio. Naturally, we had breakfast at Bob Evans'. Stupid not to:
This was my "be fit" breakfast. Yum:
But look how the outdoor shot is washed out and blue, and the indoor shots were not. I think I fiddled with my settings, but I don't know what I did wrong. It's on full auto, I think.
Every outdoor shot I took, unless there were some lights in the photo, did the same thing.
For another example, this shot (while snow falling from a grey sky) should have been pretty nice, but it's blue:
This problem is new to me. Don't tell me to photoshop it. I don't do that.
Look at this one. This could have been darn good:
Sunday, February 6. 2011
We weren't oblivious to Reagan's 100th. We just had little to add to what has been said elsewhere.
We missed Ben Franklin's birthday in January, and therefore missed some of his good thoughts about wealth.
Basically, he seems to advise against spending money.
Matthew 5:13-20
5:13 "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
5:14 "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.
5:15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
5:17 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
5:18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
5:19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
5:20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
Saturday, February 5. 2011
Samuelson in The Wilson Quarterly: In embracing a victims-and-villains explanation of the recession, Americans are missing important lessons about the future of the U.S. economy.
He begins:
We Americans turn every major crisis into a morality tale in which the good guys and the bad guys are identified and praised or vilified accordingly. There’s a political, journalistic, and intellectual imperative to find out who caused the crisis, who can be blamed, and who can be indicted (either in legal courts or the court of public opinion) and, if found guilty, be jailed or publicly humbled. The great economic and financial crisis that began in 2007 has been no exception...
The "Oh, shit!" moment:
Tom Friedman's house:
More below the fold -
Continue reading "Another Saturday fun random image dump"
Burgundy and Provence, by boat
Hendrik Avercamp, Skaters, c. 1630
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