Monday, December 31, 2007

Electrocuting Whales & Machine Gunning Seals



The above jaw-dropping article is from a 1931 edition of Modern Mechanics magazine.

Click on the picture to enlarge it, and be sure to read the whole thing

It seems some Norwegian fellow figured out a way to electrocute whales with a generator and a harpoon.

What could possibly go wrong with this idea?

One hundred thousand pounds of angry whale, a gasoline-powered generator putting out enough amps to kill five circus elephants, a lot of wire coiled in the bow, foaming swells breaking over the gunwales, straining oars, and a fellow standing up?

Sounds perfect!

Check out the last few sentences in the above article too, as well as the drawing at the bottom.

It seems a couple of intrepid Americans decided machine-gunning sea lions was a perfect solution to declining salmon fisheries on the West Coast. Never mind all those brand-new mile-long gill nets. The declining salmon population must be due to those pesky sea lions!

But, of course, nothing much changes, does it?

The last buffalo hunt is going on right now in our oceans and seas. Cod has been nearly wiped out in the North Atlantic, Swordfish has been pushed to the edge, Sharks have been decimated by long liners, and Tuna prices are shooting through the roof as catch numbers are plummeting into the basement.

Meanwhile, whales are still paying the price for human stupidity more than 100 years ago.

This summer, Inupiat whale hunters in Alaska found the business-end of a 115-year old harpoon buried in the body of a 50-ton Bowhead Whale caught off Alaska.

The harpoon was part of an exploding lance made between 1885 and 1895 on the Southeast Coast of Massachusetts, where supplies were quickly used up. The lance company went out of business, as whaling populations crashed.

And they have not recovered quickly, have they?

Today, there are only about 9,000 Bowhead Whales left in the world -- less than 20 percent of their former numbers.




Crosby, Stills & Nash: "To the Last Whale"
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Sunday, December 30, 2007

No So Long Ago, Not So Far Away




This is an almost-perfectly preserved baby Mammoth
which was recently found near Siberia's Yuribei River by a reindeer herder.

The animal, preserved in the permafrost, is believed to be about 10,000 years old and seems to be in nearly perfect condition, with fur, trunk, skin and internal organs intact. Only the ears have been lost. The frozen baby Mammoth is in Japan now for study and display.

For more thoughts on Mammoths and time, see "The Mammoth in the Hedge" on this blog.
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Unintended Consequences: It's the Law!

From today's Yorkshire Post comes this article by Bill Carmichael:


"THE law of unintended consequences is the curse of well-meaning lawmakers around the globe.

You set out with high ideals of achieving some lofty goal – and end up doing precisely the opposite.

So it is with the banning of hunting with dogs. Almost three years after the ban was imposed in 2005, the sport of fox hunting has never been healthier.

This Boxing Day more than 250,000 hunt supporters gathered at over 300 meets around the UK – the numbers apparently swollen by people who previously had no interest in hunting, but who now turn out in protest at what they see as an illiberal and nanny-statist law.

So those people who set out to destroy fox hunting have succeeded only in invigorating it. Those who wanted to save foxes from the hounds have engineered a situation where more of them are killed than ever before.

You'd need a heart of stone not to laugh."

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Another Year of Failure

Once again a year has gone by, and I did not get an Oscar or a Nobel Prize despite having put together a couple of really excellent PowerPoint presentations.

Damn Al Gore!

I was not voted Sexiest Man Alive despite the fact that I lost 30 pounds.

Damn Matt Damon!

I was overlooked for the Pritzker Prize despite having designed -- and even constructed -- a very novel and successful housing for my new trail-cam.

I did not win a MacArthur "Genius" grant award despite the fact that, by my calculation, I won every argument I got into.

The Pulitzer Prize committee managed to overlook my work again, saying they really did not have a category for "a series of random quotes gleaned from newspapers and magazines." Well yes, but I was quoted in those damn articles. A freaking Dictaphone can do what a reporter does. Oats are not improved having been run through the horse. The Pulitzer people disagreed, of course, and asked me, via restraining order, to stop calling their offices to argue the matter.

I did not win an Emmy, a Tony, or a SAG award despite some truly magnificent performances feigning interest in repeated stories told by others, which really were not that interesting the first time they were told.

The Country Music Association took no notice of my fine work singing backup in the truck with Lyle Lovett on the CD player.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame chose not to honor my excellent Led Zeppelin air guitar solos.

I did not win the Archon X-Prize for Genomics despite my deep thinking about canine devolution within a closed registry system.

I was not considered for the Templeton Prize despite having founded the First Church of Field and Stream.

"The People" did not chose me for a People's Choice Award. I was similarly passed over for a Golden Globe.

Now, to tell the truth, this last one is fine with me because I would not accept a Golden Globe even if one were offered.

I have standards. And the Golden Globes -- given by the foreign press -- is beneath those standards.

"He's big in France," is the unkindest cut of all.

So to sum it up, this year has not been a banner year.

On the upside, by Mr. Soichiro Honda's calculation, I am about halfway to success. Another 50 of these kinds of years, and I may be ready for a Darwin Award. And really, isn't that the award with the very best name? I think so!




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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Bill Boatman's Online Catalogue




Bill Boatman's is the semi-legendary catalogue
of stuff for the raccoon hunter, houndsman, beagler, and bird dog trainer, and it is now available on line (as a PDF).

Boatman's is a one-of-a kind business and if you are looking for a roll age, scent, or "coon tongs," this is the place to go!
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First Global Warning on Global Warming



This little squib comes from the July 1932 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine.




This little squib comes from the August 1953 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine. It seems to me that the rise-in-temperature numbers to 2080 that are quoted here might be about right.

Of course, in neither one of these articles, no one even mentions population growth, do they?

And they still don't, as I noted in an earlier post about Al Gore's very own "Inconvenient Truth."

For the record, it took from the dawn of time to 1830 for the first billion people to be added to the population of the earth, but the second billion were added by 1930, two years before the top article was written.

By 1953, when the second article was written, world population was approaching 3 billion.

Today, world population is over 6.7 billion people and growing rapidly. See the population counter in the far right margin of this blog to watch world population growth in real time.

As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us!"

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Friday, December 28, 2007

The Very Early History of Fox Hunting



From the web site and whimsical gallery of Mark Burckhardt, a Texas artist. For another bit of nice dinosaur art from Mr. Burckhardt, click here.

For the real history of fox hunting in general, and terrier work in particular, read Chapter 1 of American Working Terriers.
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The Blue Ribbon and Gold Card Alliance



In his book "Dog Wars," Donald McCaig comes to the conclusion that the Kennel Club is like a religion, founded on faith, and based on evidence unseen in the real world.


"Throughout the fight [with the Kennel Club], I kept stumbling over a simple truth without quite seeing it: dog fanciers and their creature, the AKC, really do believe that what is most valuable about any dog can be judged in the show ring, that the show ring is the sole legitimate purpose and reward for all dog breeding. They even believe, against all evidence, that the show ring 'improves' breeds."


I was reminded of this passage while reading a recent article in The Canadian Veterinary Journal in which Koharik Arman recommends several Kennel Club reforms she thinks should be undertaken in order to save dogs from the 19th Century eugenics theories upon which the Kennel Club's current system is now based.

Arman's suggested reforms include:


  • Opening breed registries to allow an increase in genetic variation;

  • Setting minimum numbers for foundation stock during breed establishment;

  • Redefining breed standards to include health, vigor, and temperament, in addition to typology;

  • Monitoring heterozygosity within breeds, presumably by looking at Coefficients of Inbreeding.

I chuckled a bit at reading the list. It's not that Ms. Arman's reforms are not good ones. It's just that Ms. Arman is naive to think the Kennel Club will ever embrace them.

I looked carefully through Ms. Arman's thesis and found her mistake -- the sunken rock upon which every discussion of Kennel Club reform eventually wrecks. Ms. Arman writes:


"The purpose of cynological associations is to facilitate the work of dog breeders, rather than impede it. "


Nonsense.

The purpose of cynological associations is to give out ribbons. Dogs are simply a mechanism for the humans to get the ribbons.

Take away the ribbons and awards, and no one would go to a dog show at all. To do what? To pay money to stand around all day, to have your dog looked at for 5 seconds by someone who does not own or work the breed? Forget it.

In fact, it's entirely possible to be in the "sport" of dog showing without even showing up at a dog show at all! Unbelievably, it's done all the time.

At the Westminster Dog Show, the winning dog may not have been bred by the owner, may not have been raised by the owner, may not have been trained by the owner, and may not be handled by the owner in the ring. At these top shows, the "sport" of dog showing is too often reduced to the "sport" of writing checks.

As for reform, I hate to pour cold water on the idea but I am an unflinching realist, and it is not going to happen, at least not soon.

After all, the obstacle to Kennel Club reform is not ignorance about the scope of the problem, is it?

Anyone who knows anything about dogs or genetics knows there are serious problems withhin the Kennel Club.

Working dogs drawn into the Kennel Club lose their working abilities within 50 years or so -- i.e. as fast as their working abilities can be washed out of the gene pool by a breeding program that places no value on those abilities.

Even as the working abilities of Kennel Club dogs evaporate, gene-based health problems tend to rise up due to concerted programs of inbreeding and the overuse of championship sires, which results in a "doubling down" on negative recessive genes.

Add in to the equation the fact that some breeds are specifically bred for their genetic defects -- short faces that result in serious breathing problems, dwarfism that results in heart and joint problems, and coat color patterns that are tied to the genes for deafness -- and you have all the health issues that prompt Mr Arman to suggest Kennel Club reform.

So why do I think Kennel Club reform is impossible? Simple: The Kennel Club is an economic system with economic assets. Change the rules of the game, and billions of dollars of canine breeding stock will be worth a great deal less overnight.

If that happens, a lot of people will quit the Kennel Club in rapid order, others will join any one of several dozen class-action lawsuits that are certain to be filed, while still others will run off to join free-standing non-affiliated breed clubs or competing kennel club registries.

Put it altogether, and you can see how major changes could easily result in the Kennel Club being pushed past the economic tipping point.

And don't think the folks at the Kennel Club haven't thought about this. You do not have to be a Wharton Business School graduate to know there are dangers in economic, social and institutional transitions.

Look at IBM, for example. The world's largest and most powerful computer and business machine company in 1978 found it could not transition to the new world of personal computers while maintaining their old mainframe computer business.

Microsoft and Dell only had to build forward, and did not have to protect or service a back-end economic model or product. IBM did.

As a consequence, Michael Dell and Bill Gates are among the richest people in the world today, while no one I know owns an IBM computer of any type. IBM still exists, of course, but they are doing more and more "business consulting." After all, in a world of 20 gigabyte laptops, who needs a mainframe?

The Kennel Club is in the same position as IBM, with the dangers of transition to a "new economy" almost beyond calculation.

In fact, the transition from a 19th Century closed-registry eugenics system of breeding dogs, to an open-registry performance-based system is actually going to be much tougher for the Kennel Club to achieve than anything IBM ever tried to do.

When push-comes-to-shove, after all, IBM was simply selling inanimate machines. Getting people to change how they evaluate and breed living animals that are connected to their all-important ego is going to be a much tougher sell.

In fact, the process of transitioning from the old paradigm to a new one is likely to kill off the Kennel Club entirely.

So long as the Kennel Club cranks out a lot of ribbons, breeders will continue to proselytize the false gospel that ribbons and Kennel Club registry papers are some sign of quality.

Change the deal, however, and the economic value of those millions of Kennel Club registry papers will evaporate, and breeders will no longer be good Kennel Club missionaries.

Kennel Club officials know this, and as a consequence they have been strongly resistant to all reform efforts.

As far as they are concerned, their first duty is not to preserve a particular breed, or even the health of dogs in general, but to preserve the Kennel Club.

From where they sit, if the Kennel Club fails to exist, then nothing else matters.

After all, many of the dog breeds that exist today only exist for Kennel Club show ring purposes. Get rid of the narrow selection criteria that fences in contrived breeds, and jettison the "market maker" that is the dog show, and many breeds will merge back together or disappear altogether. Imagine the horror of that!

The Kennel Club will tell you, that "Yes," a large number of dogs are burdened by genetic maladies, but that's the risk folks take when they get a pure-bred dog.

The data is out there for anyone to find and read about. Caveat emptor.

If your dog is deaf, or has ataxia, or is dysplastic, or has poor liver function, well then it's a good bet that you did not do your homework when purchasing a dog.

Besides, you can always put down your defective dog and simply buy another one. Most breeders have a lot of puppies they are willing to sell. Try again!

And it's not as if all those crossbred dogs down at the pound are all free of genetic disorder, is it?

This is the Kennel Club way of thinking. This is their defense.

And, to tell the truth, it has a kind of internal logic to it. If your goal is not improving the genetic health of dogs in general, and you are not concerned about preserving the working qualities of specific breeds of working dogs, then there is not much wrong with the Kennel Club way of doing business.

Yes, the Kennel Club dogs don't work. And yes, Kennel Club dogs may be sicker than they might otherwise be under a different breeding regime. But so what?

After all, you can still find a Dalmatian that is not deaf if you look carefully. And if you really want a Dalmatian, isn't that the best and easiest course of action?

Of course it is! There's no reason to look for macro solutions when a micro solution is so close at hand. Thump all the melons, and try to avoid the rotten ones! Go to a "good" breeder, and not a "backyard" breeder, and never mind that all the "good breeders" are actually hobby breeders with a lot of dogs in the backyard. All we need is a pejorative term to describe anyone we don't like -- there's no reason to actually change the Kennel Club structure itself. After all, they're "just a registry."

Of course, Ms. Arman does not seem to be buy into that line of thinking, and neither do I.

Even if it's not illegal to embrace a flawed evaluation system that results in a rising number of defective products, it is certainly immoral.

And when that defective product is an animal that will live a shortened life in pain, it is positively evil.

But of course one man's floor is another man's ceiling. Where you stand may depend on where you sit.

Defective dogs with expensive ailments are not all bad for everyone, are they? If you are a veterinarian, for example, such animals may be your bread-and-butter.

And don't think veterinarians don't know this! They certainly do.

Yes, some vets may privately tut-tut about the high rate of inbreeding, but are their trade associations going to launch a campaign to push for reform within the Kennel Club, as Ms. Arman suggests they should?

Heck no! Why would they do that? Dogs with serious long-term gene-based physical disabilities are a core part of any veterinary practice. Why would the veterinary trade associations launch a campaign to cut off their nose in order to spit their face? They wouldn't. And they haven't.

Besides, if the veterinary trade associations fired off at the Kennel Club, the Kennel Club might fire back.

Suppose the Kennel Club blew the whistle on all the price-gouging, up-coding and bogus billing going on in the veterinary trades?

Suppose the Kennel Club started telling folks how to worm their own dogs and how to give vaccines? Suppose the Kennel Club started educating folks about the nonsense called canine teeth cleaning? Where would the veterinary trades be then?

So no, the veterinarians are not going to lead the charge to reform the Kennel Club.

Instead, the veterinarians and the Kennel Club are going to start doing business with each other.

This is called cross-marketing.

The Kennel Club now promotes Kennel Club-friendly veterinarians to help vets generate new business.

For their part, veterinarians never warn prospetive clients off of a breed, not do they mention that there are entire canine web sites organized around breeds-by-disease.

And, of course, both sides love pet insurance. What a great product that is! It means veterinarians can charge their customers more without guilt, while the economic pressure to reform defective Kennel Club breeding practices will be lifted a little bit.

Plus, the pet insurance companies will pay kickbacks for referrals!

And so the Kennel Club "religion," which is based on the failed eugenics theories of the 19th Century, continues unreformed.

And have no illusion: If reform ever does come, it will not come easily. What religious reformation ever has?

But, of course, do you really trust any religion that remains unreformed?


"Mrs Shortley looked at the priest and was reminded that these people did not have an advanced religion. There was no telling what all they believed since none of the foolishness had been reformed out of it."
. . . .- Flannery O'Connor, "The Diplaced Person"

Exactly!

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A HAT TIP to Pat Nolan over at his dog training blog for pointing me to The Canadian Veterinary Journal article that this post bounces off of.
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Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Those Clever Humane Societies!

The November 1937 issue of Popular Science featured this upbeat article about how the clever folks at the humane society in Washington, D.C. had managed to invent a kill room on wheels. Now those pesky dogs did not even have to go back to the shelter at all -- the dog catcher could just kill them on the way to the dump. And they talk about German engineering!

Increasing the speed and efficiency of dog killing is still a core part of the business plan of the American "humane movement. To read more, see >> Beyond the Blue Solution of Dog Shelter Death

Just before Christmas, the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control and department Director Marcia Mayeda were sued by the No Kill Advocacy Center which alleges the LA animal shelter:

4Kills healthy and treatable animals before their state mandated holding period;
4Kills lost animals without making reasonable attempts to find the animal's owners;
4Fails to provide adequate veterinary care to impounded animals, and;
4Fails to provide adequate nutrition, shelter and exercise to animals.

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Monday, December 24, 2007

Ricky Scaggs & James Taylor: New Star Shining



'New Star Shining' is sung here by the James Taylor and Ricky Scaggs.

A bit of trivial pursuit: this song was written by John Hall, who was a co-founder of the band Orleans, but is now a Democratic Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York.
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Sunday, December 23, 2007

Writing for Reading

This web site supposedly tells you the "reading level" of your blog.

Reading level is not quite what it would seem. If you are writing too fancy, a lot of folks will not understand what you are saying.

In addition, a lot of folks with very little to say dress up their deficiencies by using big worlds and writing long sentences and long paragraphs.

On the other end of the scale, if your prose gets too simple and stilted, it may read as boring and juvenile as a Dick-and-Jane book.

Supposedly, the rule of thumb is to strive for about a sixth to eighth grade reading level.

In short, I appear to be hitting the mark. Not that I was trying. I just believe in declarative sentences like "Call me Ismael."

A few random bits and bobs on literacy in America:


  • The 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey of the National Center for Education Statistics found that "Nearly 50% of the Americans surveyed cannot read well enough to find a single piece of information in a short publication, nor can they make low level inferences based on what they read."

  • About one in every four Americans (25%) is a high school dropout.

  • About half (45%) have gone to college for some period of time, but fewer than one in six (15%) have a college degree
Below, we have the pretty, talented, and not-well-educated Kellie Pickler summarizing it all for us on the television show "Are you smarter than a Fifth Grader?"

Enjoy!


"A" is for appalachia, and "B" is for blonde.
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Saturday, December 22, 2007

Captain Kangaroo and Dolly Parton




The late Bob Keeshan, aka "Captain Kangaroo" was also a great lover of Jack Russell Terriers, and (I am told) a member of the JRTCA.

This poor-quality video shows Bob introducing another national treasure, Dolly Parton, who sings "Cracker Jack." Knowing Keeshan's love of dogs, it would not surprise me to find that Dolly picked this song out of her repertoire just for him. The fact that it would appeal to kids too, probably did not hurt. Come to think of it, "Cracker" is not too bad a name for a white Jack Russell.

Captain Kangaroo debuted on CBS television in 1955 and ran for 30 years before moving to public television for six more. Bob Keeshan died in 2004 at the age of 76.

A bit of trivial pursuit: Before playing Captain Kangaroo, Bob played the original "Clarabell the Clown" on the Howdy Doody television program from 1948-1952
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Michael Vick Finds God (and is HE pissed)


Faith of our (Founding) Fathers




This country is ripe for a good old fashioned religious war, and thanks to the GOP, which has spent the last few years demanding that political candidates wear their religious beliefs on their sleeve, we may yet get it. What a wonderful Christmas present.

"Live by Anne Coulter, die by Anne Coulter," that's what I say.

The first volley might have been fired on the New York subway the other day when a man was physically attacked for replying "Happy Hanukkah" when someone else wished him "Merry Christmas."

Happy Hanukkah?

Those are fighting words!

Or at least they are if you are an idiot, and get all your news from Bill O'Reilly.

And so the nice Christian Boys threw down and started beating up the Jew until a Muslim fellow from Bangladesh stepped in to come to the Jewish fellow's rescue!

A Muslim guy stepped in to end the fight? Unbelievable sounding, but true.

In this twisted world, the ultimate irony is that the only "good Christian" left on a New York City train was a Muslim.

Go figure.

Meanwhile Mike Huckabee is standing firm in his disbelief in evolution.

Science? Science is for the Godless heathens -- you know, those damn foreigners who make all that stuff we like to buy at WalMart.

And never forget, says Huckabee, that life starts at conception.

Does that mean he's opposed to birth control? That's the rumor. But who knows?

Just imagine a tidal wave of Jamie Lynn Spears' trying to home-school their kids based on a fundamentalist educational doctrine that says evolution does not occur. Woooeee. I see no problems for the nation there!

And maybe that will not happen under Huckabee. He seems more rational than that. More to be revealed, no doubt.

Not crazy to be concerned, though, is it?

And then you have Mitt Romney, who took to the airwaves to pay homage to the "faith of his father," which resulted in the over-caffeinated and under-medicated Lawrence O'Donnell (one of the star's of HBO's TV series Big Love) ripping a hole in the studied civility (cough, cough) of The McLaughlin Group.




My favorite part is when the slightly-dim Eleanor Clift tries to smooth things over by noting that the long history of Mormon biggotry is no big deal.

Never mind, suggests Eleanor through omission, that we would never even consider a candidate that was a member of a country club that excluded blacks and women. A church is (somehow) different.

So what if Romney is a card-carrying member of a religion that kept out blacks until Romney himself was well past the age of 30?

The always-liberal Eleanor Clift is so terrified of calling a spade a spade that she tries to rationalize away true racism in the Mormon church for fear of offending anyone, noting that "every religion has had its scandals."

To which the former Catholic priest John McLaughlin asks "is that a crack about the Inquisition?" To which Eleanor Clift notes that the Catholic Church has had more recent scandals than that (i.e. a reference to pedophile priests).

Whoooeee. You cannot make this kind of stuff up.

Fight, fight, fight!

Of course, no one is even mentioning the abortion-defending, wife-cheating philanderer Rudy Giuiliani.

There's no question he's Godless enough for the most die-hard lefty Granola-eating-pagan-dope-smoker. And he's a gun-grabber too, God bless him. Perfect!

Then to take it across the aisle, you have Hillary Clinton, a Methodist who seems to carry a pair of heavy hands with her in the political ring, and who is only too happy to have surrogates (including husband Bill) run down the opposition, especially Barrack Obama.

And don't think folks haven't noticed.

Yesterday, nationally acclaimed documentary film maker Ken Burns (of The Civil War fame) endorsed Barack Obama for President after watching Hillary in action.

Ken, who had planned to stay neutral in the race, said that the Clinton campaign's attacks on Barack Obama prompted him to declare his support for Obama.

Ken says he thinks Barack is the only candidate in the race who can put an end to the "slash-and-burn character attacks" that have prevented progress on the challenges we face as a nation.

Noting Obama's judgment and courage, Burns said we need "a leader who calls upon each and every one of us to heed the 'better angels of our nature' and not our basest fears. Barack Obama will be that kind of president. It is time for a real change."

So there it is. Ken Burns thinks Obama is the only real Christian running. And I'm not saying he's wrong, either.

Ken may very well be right.

After all, Obama is not just a regular church-goer, he's also living the word. As the conservative blogger Mark Finkelstein notes:



"When David Gregory grilled Hillary Clinton on Today on December 17th, the challenges to her came from his own mouth. Not once was a statement by Barack Obama used to confront Clinton.

But when Barack Obama made back-to-back appearances this morning on Today and Morning Joe, again and again tough questions were posed not in the first person but as coming from Hillary Clinton or her surrogates."


In short, there is little or no video of Obama talking evil about others, and no shortage of those clips coming from Hillary.

Bottom line: Pay attention, and people will tell you who they are.

Pay attention to what people do, and you will know a great deal about them.

By watching, you can sometimes learn more than by listening.

Or, as Thomas Jefferson of Virginia so eloquently put it:



“Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.”


Bingo.

Let us put our faith in that.

Let us watch how people have acted in their life.

Let us judge their faith on action, because faith without action is no faith at all. It is merely rhetoric.

And God knows, we have had our fill of that!.





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Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Earth Dog - Running Dog Magazine




You can subscribe to Earth Dog - Running Dog magazine on line by simply clicking here. MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, eCheck and several other forms of payment are accepted.

It's never been easier to subscribe (or to renew your subscription!) to the oldest and largest-circulation publication on lurchers and terrier work in the UK.
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Why There are So Few Yellow Dog Republicans

Have you ever noticed that there are "Yellow Dog Democrats" and "Blue Dog Democrats", but no Republican dogs of any kind?

It turns out that may not be a coincidence!

The article below is from today's edition of The New York Times:



It’s No Longer a Dog’s World
By Marc Santora

There is a tired line that if a politician wants a friend in Washington, he should get a dog.

That advice may need some rethinking, (especially for the dog), what with the bizarre stories that continue to surface about the Republican candidates and their troubled relations with the canine community.

First, it was discovered that Mitt Romney once strapped the family pooch, Seamus, on top of his car on a family trip, a scene that calls to mind Chevy Chase’s carelessness in the movie “Vacation.”

And then there was the revelation that Rudolph W. Giuliani’s wife, Judith, once worked for a company that killed puppies in the testing of medical equipment.

Now, Newsweek reports that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s son David, at 17, was kicked out of a Boy Scout camp in Hatfield, Ark. after allegations surfaced that he was involved in the hanging of a dog, killing it.

The magazine article raises questions about whether Mr. Huckabee improperly used his office to squash calls for a police investigation, which the candidate’s campaign disputed. Mr. Huckabee told Newsweek that “his son did not engage in ‘intentional torture.’ ”

“There was a dog that apparently had mange and was absolutely, I guess, emaciated,” he told the magazine. The article also quotes a campaign official as saying David Huckabee “regrets” what happened but points out that he later made Eagle Scout.


Eagle Scout, eh? So that knot really held, huh?
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Monday, December 17, 2007

Coffee and Provocation

Real Dog Armour:
Mountain would look so cool in this. And yes, it can be ordered! I want. Or at least the dogs do. For barn work. Cut collars are so girly in comparison. Thanks to Steve Bodio at Querencia for this one! For $100 or so, Mountain could get a backplate. I'm just saying ...



D*ckless Wonders:
"D*ckless wonders" is not an editorial comment -- that's simply a statement of fact. A couple of folks sent this to me, and then it appeared on Querencia too. It's still too good not to blog again here. The quotes below come from The Daily Mail:

"The proud motto of northern Europe’s crack rapid-reaction force is ad omnia paratus. Prepared for everything, everywhere. But the heraldic lion above the Latin tag now sends a less plucky message – he has just been digitally emasculated and, though technically still a lion rampant, he does not seem to be ready for anything, anywhere.

The change was implemented after a group of women Swedish soldiers protested that they could not identify with such an ostentatiously male lion on their army crest. A complaint of sex discrimination was then lodged with the European Court of Justice.

'We were forced to cut the lion’s willy off with the aid of a computer,' Christian Braunstein, from the Tradition Commission of the Swedish Army, said. Now the Nordic Battlegroup, a force of 2,400 soldiers, is looking deeply embarrassed. For sceptics who already consider the Nordic Battlegroup to be something of an oxymoron – it is led by the Swedes, who were last in battle in 1809 – the operation on the lion is not an auspicious omen.

'A castrated lion – the perfect symbol for European defence policy,' an American military blogger sneered."



Kentucky's Elk Herd at Over 7,000:
Kentucky's elk herd is at over 7,300 animals, and 400 hunting permits are being offered this year, up from 300 last year. Before the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation brought them east, the last elk has been shot out of Kentucky in 1850. They were first introduced to Kentucky back in December of 1997 and subsequent introductions have come from Kansas, Utah, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon and Arizona. Kentukcy counties in the elk restoration zone are Bell, Breathitt, Clay, Floyd, Harlan, Johnson, Knott, Knox, Leslie, Letcher, Magoffin, Martin, McCreary, Perry, Pike and Whitley. So when is this good idea going to come to Virginia?

World Record Rat and World's Smallest Possum:
In the past, this blog has noted that Science Needs More Terriermen to help discover rare and endangered species. A case in point: news comes out of Indonesia that biologists there have discovered the world's largest rat - five times the size of a typical city rat - as well as a tiny possum that may be the smallest marsupial in the world. If they would send a terrierman, perhaps these things could be found so much earlier!


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Super Cool



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Front Yard Wildlife








Saturday, December 15, 2007

Coffee and Provocation

Worst Messaging on Global Warming:
An email from John Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sent to me by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee begins: "Where I live in upstate New York, I've recently seen robins and bluebirds show up in the middle of winter. And this past January, a friend of mine ate asparagus he harvested in the Catskills, which are normally frozen this time of year. Global warming is no longer a distant threat." Robins, bluebirds and edible asparagus are a threat? I've always thought of them as a benefit. And yes, that was the entire case statement of the problem: the rest was a pitch to send money.

The First Church of Global Warming:
The Daily Mail reports, without a hint of irony, that Pope Benedict XVI has "launched an attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology." The Mail goes on to note that the Pope says it is vital that the international community "base its policies on science rather than dogma." Ri-iiight. A lecture on science not dogma from the Pope? Thanks for sharing Benny!

Remind Me to Never Drink from a Glass in a Hotel Room:
I am hardly a finicky person, but this one makes me shudder just a little bit. And what about the sheets?

Live in Paris for Under $100,000:
The wife and I keep turning over the idea of selling out, simplifying, and settling down. Or as we like to put it: "Life is short, let's enjoy it." Towards that end, I spend a little time every week looking at "real-estate porn" just to see what's out there. My last great find was a huge lovely brick mansion with a lovely yard a spectacular inside (all designed by Walt Disney's father) in Missouri for about $270,000. This week, I found a place in Paris that had a pretty unbelievable price attached to it. Paris, eh? Now there's a place the Misses and I could kick back in. Might even sing a song about it.



Meanwhile the Rapacious Stalk the Earth:
The greedy bastards ruining this country know no boundaries or shame. Across America, more than 2 million people are expected to end up in foreclosure because of subprime mortgage shenanigans abetted in part by by Goldman Sachs, which simultaneously flogged subprime mortgages as great investments even as their hedge funds shorted them. The payoff for Goldman Sachs: over $19 billion in profits, and an average end-of-year bonus of $600,000 for each of their 30,000 employees.

Debasing the Currency:
Good news of sorts: strippers have finally found a use for $2 bills.

The Golden Brass Compass:
A cool little web site selling brass compasses, sextants, telescopes, pirate glasses, microscopes, etc. Check it out.

In the Market for a New Car?
It's that time of year for some folks. Lots to consider, but the Honda Element got top paws over at Dogcars.com.

Barney Cam 2007:
Since two of the current occupants of the WhiteHouse are terriers, I have kept rather close watch on the "Barney Cam" videos put out at Christmas time, and I have noted that bad things happen to those who appear in them. Anyone remember Gonzalez? Gone and under investigation. How about Harriet Miers? Gone and under investigation. This year the theme is "Our National Parks." You remember our National Parks -- the ones the Bush Administration has paid so little attention to up to now, and which have an $8 billion repair backlog that remains unaddressed. President Bush begins by telling Barney and Miss Beazely they can be Junior Park Rangers. Well, actually, that might be a problem. You see, dogs are actually prohibited from most National Parks. And another thing. Showing videos of a dog playing with a Christmas tree ornaments is not a great idea unless you get free veterinary surgery? Bush's dogs have free vet care? Oh then, never mind. Carry on!


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Friday, December 14, 2007

A Mobile Phone Saleman? Beautiful!



A reminder that not all that is gold glitters. Watch the judges on this one. Wales is done proud! Thanks to Teddy M. for this one.

His winning perfomance on Britain's Got Talent, can be seen here.

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Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Why Do You Think They Call It a Chow?




Coffee and Provocation

Web Sites I Bookmarked:
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Strange Maps is Very Cool. Check out the cultural map of the world, the map showing how well evolution is taught in U.S. schools, the European map of blondes, the map of the world 25 million years into the future, or the Tory map of the world, the beautiful map of the shifting river bed of the Mississippi River, the bizarro tourist map of the U.S. made in Japan, or the United States of Baseball. Lots and lots more. Check it out.
4 Post Secrets is a strangely unsettling art project in which people anonymously mail their inner-most secrets on a postcard to an address in Maryland. Check it out. A hat tip to Emily K. S. for this one.
4 Found magazine is a web site/publication celebrating found stuff. A hat tip to Emily K. S. for this one too.

The Five Best Dog Books?
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Stanley Coren (author of Why Does My Dog Act That Way?) says the five best dog books are: 1) For the Love of a Dog by Patricia B. McConnell; 2) If Only They Could Speak by Nicholas H. Dodman; 3) If Dogs Could Talk by Vilmos Csányi; 4) Bones Would Rain From the Sky by Suzanne Clothier, and; 5) Always Faithful by William Putney. Others will disagree, of course. Feel free to add your recommendations in the "comments" section.
See Amazon or AbeBooks to order

Nutria are Coming to New Jersey:
Actually, they are already there. Now the push is on to wipe them out before they get a foothold. Good luck with that!


Corruption and the Endangered Species Act:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finally admitted that "sound science" has been routinely ignored when making decisions about wildlife protection under the Endangered Species Act, and it has said it will now reverse or re-examine seven decisions involving the White-tailed Prairie Dog, the Preble's Meadow Jumping Mouse, the Canada Lynx, the Hawaiian Picture-wing Fly, the Arroyo Toad, the California Red-legged Frog, and the Sacramento Splittail fish. The Fish and Wildlife Service's reversal comes hard on the heels of an investigation of Julie MacDonald, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary overseeing the Fish and Wildlife Service. Ms. MacDonald was a civil engineer who routinely pressured scientists to alter their findings in order to curry favor with developers. Congressman Nicky Rahall of West Virginia, who is Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, says MacDonald "should never have been allowed near the endangered species program." Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists says the seven admitted instances of wrongdoing "do not begin to plumb the depths of what's wrong" at the wildlife agency and its implementation of the Endangered Species Act. A hat tip to Chris for pointing to the ESA reversal article. The U.S. Department of Interior, for the record, is a cess-pit of corruption. Look at oil and gas leases at the Minerals Management Service if you want to see billions of dollars lost from corruption and incompetence.

The Wall of Death?
John Wegner, the chief environmental officer of Emory University, has labeled the facade of the math building at his school "The Wall of Death" because 60 birds a year are killed while flying into it. Sixty birds over the course of a year is a "Wall of Death?" Please, let's not debase the language (or the cause) by flashing into hyperbole too quickly, eh? So what's Mr. Wegner's solution to the crisis? Believe it or not, it's draping mesh off the side of the Math Building for three months a year. In my opinion, this makes a horrible environmental statement, suggesting that a huge cock-a-mamie production is required to do even minimal environmental good. Don't get me wrong: I am not opposed to saving birds -- all for it in fact. But bird impacts on buildings are not a new problem and it's not one to panic about. Bird populations -- especially passerines -- rise and fall, and tend to balance themselves out. Yes, let's try to reduce bird impacts, but it's generally a good idea to innovate rather than hyperventilate. David Sibley is trying to do that. He has posted a nice couple of pieces about his experiments with low-cost bird-proofing which is based on the theory that birds can see UV wavelengths pretty well. He's clearly got an idea here, and since Emory is a University, how about throwing that building-drapery money towards a couple of Chemistry Department geeks who can be detailed to coming up with a spray-on UV-bright window coating? A hat tip to Marie E. for sending me the Emory article.


North Carolina to Allow Sunday Falconry/Hawking:
It look like North Carolina is going to allow Sunday falconry. Under "Justification" for the rule change, the North Carolina Wildlife Commission notes: "The Commission has the legal authority to allow falconry on Sundays, and there is no biological reason to maintain the current prohibition. " To which I would only add: "Damn straight, and let's get it on." The propensity to legislate without a reason is the Mother of the Devil. How many falconers are there in North Carolina? About as many working terrier enthusiasts, I would venture. They can do no harm to anything. In fact, artisan hunters of all kinds (bow and arrow hunters included) should be encouraged and dropping all restrictions on Sunday hunting (where they still exist) is a good first step. A hat tip to Moose Droppings
for this one.

Exactly What Does the Windows Key Do?
It's down there on the left side of your keyboard -- the one you ignore. Is it just branding? No, actually. Press it and it opens up the "Start Menu." Press it and "E" at the same time, and you get Windows Explorer. Press it and "F" at the same time, and your computer will start the search menu for files on your computer. Press is and "L" and your computer will log you off. Now you know. Thus endeth this useless lesson.

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Monday, December 10, 2007

Land of the Free


Warenton, Virginia Fox hounds and riders.


The piece below has been vandalized by the title writer. "Tally Ho Dude?" No one outside of the California surfer community, circa 1990, uses terms like "dude". That said, and with one other small caveat, it is a nice piece.

The other caveat has to do with the power of the animal rights movement in the U.S. The notion that the Humane Society of the the U.S. or PETA could put a stop to hunting of any kind is laughable.

Virginia has an expressed constitutional right to hunt, spends money encouraging more people to hunt, and keeps expanding the hunt season (and the limits) for deer and many other species.

PETA may be headquartered in Virginia, but those over-reaching gas bags don't make a peep in this state. They may be able to push around Kentucky Fried Chicken, but ESPN runs hunting shows every day, every magazine rack in American has hook-and-bullet publications on it, and the conservation community values hunters and anglers above all others.

In the state of Virginia we shoot well over 200,000 deer a year, and more than a 1,000 bear. Last year trappers took 35,000 red and gray fox and another 85,000 raccoon, and the population of everyything is on the rise. In fact nuisance widlife is such an issue in most of the U.S. that it is now illegal to move a beaver -- you are required to kill it rather than move it in most states. In Virginia the state pays a bounty in oder to encourage people to kill coyote (numbers are on the rise anyway), and there is talk of requiring hunters to shoot a doe in order to be able to be get a permit to shoot a buck; a kind of population-control-through-hunting that was unimaginable only 40 years ago.

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Sunday Times of London, December 26, 2004

Tally ho, dude! The hunt rides to America
by : Jonathan Green

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A foxhunters' exodus is under way from Britain to the land of the free
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Tomorrow morning Dennis Downing, splendid in his scarlet coat, will be up early to oversee the hounds -particularly his old favourites Gossip and Gorgeous. About 70 people will join the meet, including his wife Sue and 19-year-old daughter Emma, and a further 30 will come to see off the hunt, armed with the customary offering of port.

The Boxing Day meet, the biggest on the hunt calendar, is being held a day late as it has fallen on a Sunday, but otherwise everything will be done in accordance with the hunt's long tradition, which stretches back to 1888.

It could be the scene in any British village. The difference is that Downing left England in 1998 and now works for the Blue Ridge hunt in Virginia, 50 miles west of Washington DC.

Instead of the patchwork of Worcestershire fields he surveyed as master of the Croome hunt, he now rides through the spectacular Shenandoah valley with the Blue Ridge mountains in the background. His companions will be airline pilots, lawyers and doctors rather than the working farmers in England he once hunted with.

The decision by the government to ban hunting with dogs -which was set to come into force on February 18 -means that Downing, 50, has made a move that many of those who rely on hunting for a living are considering emulating. There still may be a temporary reprieve -the announcement last week that the attorney-general will not fight any application for an injunction against the ban from the Countryside Alliance means that hunting is likely to continue for several months yet.

But the uncertainty means Ireland, other European countries and America are becoming increasingly attractive as a new home for huntsmen and women. First choice for many is America, because the two communities have long hunted with each other.

When an advertisement for a whipper-in at the Blue Ridge hunt was placed in Horse & Hound recently, the hunt received 44 applications. Of those, two were from Americans, five from Ireland and the other 37 from British hunt staff.

"When we advertised a similar post four years ago we only got two people applying from England," says Linda Armbrust, the master of the Blue Ridge hunt. "It's incredible."

So Downing, it seems, was merely ahead of the pack when his family left Britain.

The strain caused by his job had become too much: the taunts Emma, then 12, endured; the ostracism Downing experienced; the industrial developments that made it increasingly difficult to keep hounds off building sites, busy roads and railway tracks.

"I thought, 'Stuff this'," says Downing and he started to scour job advertisements. In May 1998 the family --including foxhounds Glider (since deceased), Gossip and Gorgeous -- packed up and moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where Downing had been appointed master of foxhounds.

"Suddenly we were somewhere where you could ride hard for 25 miles and not see a single car," says Downing. "And our standard of living shot up -for the first time in my life I lived in a centrally heated house. It was difficult being in the Deep South -- at first no one could understand what I said and I couldn't understand them but the people were so warm and welcoming." They moved to the Virginia hunt a couple of years later.

Indeed, foxhunting has a long and rich history in America. Foxhounds were first imported in 1650 by British colonists and the first organised hunt was held in 1747 by Lord Fairfax, an English landowner, who introduced George Washington to the joys of hunting.

Currently there are foxhound hunts in 35 states -hunting over vastly different terrains and for different quarries. In the pinewoods of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee they hunt red and grey foxes and coyotes. In New England the deciduous growth is good cover for the red fox, as is the landscape in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware. On the Great Plains of the Midwest and the Rocky Mountains in California, coyotes are the main quarry.

However, there is one very distinct difference between the American and English form of hunting. American hunts will chase a fox but not kill it when it goes to ground. "We don't have the same problems with foxes as you do in the UK so they are not vermin here," says Joseph T Murtagh, of the Rose Tree Fox Hunting Club in Brogue, Pennsylvania, the oldest hunt in America. "We chase them and when they go to ground we account for them and they live to fight another day. In fact, I don't think our hounds even know how to kill a fox."

The one thing that Downing does miss is the atmosphere he remembers surrounding a British hunt, despite the protesters. "It used to be exceptional. I remember 1997, my last Boxing Day in England. When we met in the centre of Pershore in Worcestershire we were surrounded by hundreds of people cheering us, lining the streets. You'd also get loads of people following the hunt in their cars. That's just not something that happens in the United States."

It was that atmosphere that had attracted Armbrust to leave America in 1980 and act as master of two British hunts -the Mendip Farmers and then the High Peak Harriers. "Here in the US if you are arranging a meet you just call everyone up on the phone," she says. "In England I would drive around from farm to farm, talk to them and get to know them -their children, who'd died, who'd got married. I really enjoyed it.

"For people in England hunting is a way of life -it's very different to that in America. I had friends in England that once the cubbing season started their whole social life revolved around it. Here in the US if you are hunting you might go shopping in the morning, then perhaps go hunting for three to four hours and then go off for a game of tennis or golf afterwards."

Armbrust spent more than a decade happily here but increasingly she felt public opinion was turning against hunting. "When John Major won in 1992 I went out to buy a second-hand horse lorry to celebrate because I knew hunting would be around for at least another five years," she recalls. "But by 1995 I realised that it was not going to survive much longer."

She decided to go back to the US, partly for personal reasons but also because she was weary of the protests. "It wasn't fun being in boots and breeches and having people spit on you at the local garage while calling you 'fox killer'. And it wasn't fun either having 50 or 60 people in black balaclavas using filthy language in front of your children. But you know what we say in the US? 'What the hell!'"

So she returned to Virginia in 1995.

She and other members of the American foxhunting set are concerned that the British move could encourage similar calls in the US, led by the Humane Society of the United States. "The entire animal rights movement in the United States reacted with unfettered glee at the ban in England," says Wayne Pacelle, its chief executive. "We view this act of parliament as one of the most important actions in the history of the animal rights movement. This will energise our efforts to stop hunting with hounds."

"I am sickened and disgusted by what they have done in the UK," retorts Lieutenant-Colonel Dennis Foster, executive director of the Masters of Foxhounds Association of America, which represents 20,000 huntsmen and women. "England is the mecca of foxhunting. It's your heritage and was exported over here. If this happened in America, I and many like me would go to war against a government that does not represent all its citizens."

Plans are already in place to ensure that the bonds between American and British hunting remain, and that British huntsmen and women do not have to put away their scarlet coats. For three years Carla Hawkinson, master of foxhounds at the Tennessee Valley hunt, has been running Goneaway Tours. It is a specialist hunting travel agency, taking American hunters to England to fulfil an ambition and vice-versa.

"I hate to say it but I think business is going to pick up for us bringing English hunters to the US," she says. Her next big excursion is to take a group of 10 American hunters to Exmoor, Dartmoor and Wiltshire in mid-February. "Hunting is integral to the lifestyle loved by country people of all classes and occupations.

We are prepared to return to the homeland of hunting and to stand up for the rights of all hunters. If hunting dies in Great Britain, we have more to fear than the law."

Downing thinks more will choose to visit America to hunt and predicts an exodus of hunt staff from Britain. "My hunt friends are calling all the time about jobs over here," he says. "But there are only so many jobs to go round."

Downing and his family have no desire to go back -they hope to get American citizenship soon and trips to England are becoming rare. When he rides out tomorrow there will be nothing but satisfaction.

"I've never once regretted what we did -- even when we go back to England on visits," says Downing. "In fact, each time we go there and see how the country has changed, I feel less and less like going back."

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