Tree Digger

At the plant sale today at the Blandy Experimental Farm and State Arboretum in Boyce, Virginia. I don't see these big rigs too often.

My New Hoodie

I just ordered this. These are the things that make my happy. 

Haptic Touch with Deer and Dogs

I learned this morning that Apple is calling the tapping signal that the Apple Watch delivers to its wearers when a message comes in, or an event is triggered, a "haptic touch."

No doubt this new wave lingo will sweep the world, as all things Apple do.

Apple writes:

It’s called the Taptic Engine, a linear actuator inside Apple Watch that produces haptic feedback. In less technical terms, it taps you on the wrist whenever you receive an alert or notification, or press down on the display. Combined with subtle audio cues from the specially engineered speaker driver, the Taptic Engine creates a discreet, sophisticated, and nuanced experience by engaging more of your senses. It also enables some entirely new, intimate ways for you to communicate with other Apple Watch wearers. You can get someone’s attention with a gentle tap. Or even send something as personal as your heartbeat.

This kind of thing is only good news for e-collar trainers looking to break through the fright-talk, inexperience, and ignorance of folks who have never seen the new e-collars in action.

Last night I was walking the dogs at their second park of the day (we are all happy that Moxie's heat is over). As we came down a path towards an old fox den that I wanted to check out, a deer rose 20 feet away. I tapped the dogs and they stopped, their noses craning forward and their tails stiff with excitement.

And that was it. 

The dogs did not move more than a few feet, I did not move more than a few feet, and the deer settled down and began to graze less than 25 feet away. I looked around and saw another deer 15 feet farther along.  He too was head down and grazing, only ocassionally stopping to look our way.

The two deer, the two dogs and I just hung out like that for about 10 minutes, until I got bored and walked the dogs back the way we had come. We would check out the fox sette another day.

All of this thanks to the "haptic touch."

Marvelous stuff.

Amazing thing can be done with little taps. And now Apple is going to normalize all of this to the masses.  Not only is the era of shock collars over, replaced by new e-collars with 100-levels of blunt stim, so too is the era of fear-mongering over e-collars.  After all, apparently people can actually feel a "haptic touch" from their Apple Watch.  I cannot feel my e-collar set on 5, but apparently the dogs can and it's enough.  I tap the button and the dogs give no overt signal they feel anything at all other than the fact that they change direction and happily come back to me for a treat. Walking two or three dogs off-leash, and without concern, even with other dogs, children, and wildlife about is a marvelous thing. And not just for me -- for the dogs as well!

This Land Is NOT Your Land, and Was NOT Made for You and Me, So Get the Hell Out Trespasser

Over at the The Mallard of Dicontent, I found this great letter that was apparently printed in the Lewistown, Montana News-Argus discussing recent Republican proposals to "privatize" all federal lands.  A special shout out to Chad Love who writes The Mallard of Dicontent blog and who has been standing up for public lands, wildlife, conservation, and hunting for a long time.

LEWISTOWN NEWS-ARGUS :: April 11, 2015 

Look to European model for land ownership

Dear Editor,

I am extremely disappointed that more of Montana’s citizens are not enthusiastically supporting the efforts of the majority leadership in the Montana Legislature, recently joined by our junior U.S. senator, to divest the federal public lands and transfer them to the state. This transfer to the states should be but a brief prelude to their sale and privatization, so they can be put to proper use by America’s wealthy.

We should applaud the efforts of these representatives and their financial backers to return the public estate to private ownership. For over 200 years, the United States has increasingly strayed from its European roots and traditions of exclusive private land ownership by the wealthy and gentry.

The silliness of President Theodore Roosevelt’s National Forest, National Wildlife Refuges and other conservation innovations can be put aside in this great effort to revert to the European model of land ownership and resource management.

As Montana’s population and its out-of-state ownership grow, there simply won’t be enough high quality hunting and fishing for everyone. As these amenities become more coveted it makes sense that we cash them in for the enjoyment of the most deserving – those who can pay.

The European model of fish and wildlife ownership by the privileged and hunting and fishing for the wealthy and their friends is a good use of these commodities and maximizes their economic value.

Alas, there will always be public land. It is inevitable that some of the arid, ugly lands devoid of game and sport fish will not be sold. Here the public can cling to this ill-considered land use.

Ancillary benefits to privatization of the public lands include the jobs that are created in an increasingly difficult economy. The vast, private estates will require gillies and gamekeepers. Enormous numbers of employees will be required to fence and patrol these lands against trespass. People will be needed to conduct the driven bird and game shoots. Privatization will eliminate all this fuss about public access. Seemingly, endless time is wasted on these access issues. Your newspaper alone will save barrels of ink.

We need to get behind this effort to privatize the public lands and get back to the model of European hunting and fishing.

A. Richard Hunter, Lewistown

Fish On Friday

Sleeping Rough

Digger Bees

Walking the dogs at one of the local parks I frequent. I came across this in the lawn (see below).  

These are digger bees coming out of the ground. Digger bees are solitary bees and are not to be confused with hives of ground wasps aka "ground bees" that I have gotten into several times when digging on the dogs, not are they Cicada Killer Wasps whose larva, the Velvet Ant, packs a nasty wallop. 

Digger bees dig little dirt pipes and stock each underground cell with pollen and nectar, and then deposit their eggs on the food mass. When the egg hatches, the bee larva consumes the pollen and nectar, pupates, and then becomes an adult bee emerging in the spring. Adult bees will overwinter below ground at the burrow site. 

I suspect this location is popular because the soil is soft and a bit sandy.  I wonder if all of these young bees represents the work of just one mamma bee?

Credit the Dog

A Big Bag of D*cks

Ducks.  It could be ducks.

But no, probably not.

This is, after all, a mostly-dog blog, and dogs luuuuv "pizzle" sticks.  Or "bully" sticks.

Whatever you want to call them, the proper term is penis, and when you slaughter 30 million cows a year, as we do in this country, and another 100 million pigs, that means there's a lot of pizzles looking for a home.

Waste is never a good thing, and so we have been turning farm waste of one kind or another into food -- for human and animal alike -- since the beginning of time.

Of course not every pizzle becomes a dog treat.  A few end up as walking sticks.

Which One Is This?

Rez Dogs

source

Before Columbus, there were dogs.

In fact, the only pack animal in North America prior to Columbus was the dog, and some native villages had as many dogs as people.

Dogs were used to guard and alert villages and camps, as well as for pulling travois, and as a food source by at least some tribes. Native dogs were distinguishable from wolves by their curved tails.

Today, "Rez dogs" are a staple in Indian territory out west.

These animals are not always feral, but many are maintained in a way very different from the way dogs are kept in the East or even in nearby towns.

Vehicle impact, injury and death due to severe winter elements and disease are treated philosophically, as if the dogs were part of the landscape, the same as deer.

Few dogs are spayed or neutered and not too many are vaccinated. 

Dog pack predation on deer, cats, sheep, goats, and even horses is fairly common. People too get atacked.

It's easy to paint too broadly. There are many reservations and many cultures.  But when the land is without bound, and the people are poor, dogs rarely do well except in the area of reproduction. That's as true in Macon, Georgia as it is on the Rosebud Reservation of South Dakota.

Hat tip to "Prairie Mary" Scriver for this video on rez dogs, and their people, on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana.  



Rez Dogs from Sancho Ex on Vimeo.

• Related Posts:** How to Cook a Xoloitzcuintli
  ** "We Give You Our Hearts In This Feast"
  ** The Tribe of the Dog 

A Well Fed Dog is Never Fat

This article was written for the August 2009 issue of Dogs Today.

I am always a bit amused at how many people have strong opinions about dog food, and how few of these opinions are supported by common sense.

For example, most dog food debates are about quality rather than quantity. And yet, quality hardly matters as most dogs (even most working dogs!) can easily have their nutritional needs met by grocery store kibble or carefully selected table scraps.

Which is not to say that everything is fine in the world of dog food. The problem, however, is not too low a quality of food; it's too high a quality of food, and too much of it too.

Fat dogs are not only losing years off of their lives, but they are also costing their owners billions in unnecessary veterinary bills.

Most of the problem is that people are over-feeding their dogs out of guilt for spending too little time with them.

Another factor, however, is that many modern dog foods are packed with calories which means "just a little more" may end up putting on real pounds. Add in chronic lack of exercise, and you have the same prescription for fat pooches as for obese humans.

It's not just too many calories. Modern dog food is also loaded with vitamins and calcium, and this triple combination means many large-breed dogs are growing up faster than God intended, and as a result they are suffering from increasing amounts of nutrition-related dysplasia.

Are canine web sites and list-servs abuzz about the need to feed dogs less in order to keep them in proper weight?

They are not.

It's estimated that 35 percent of the dogs are over-weight and obesity is the number one killer of dogs and people in this country, but that conversation tends to strike a little too close to home.

Put three people in a room and talk about obesity as a health issue, and at least one of those people is going to cop an attitude: Are you talking about me??!

Which circles us back to the issue of dog food. When people ask me what I feed my own dogs, I tell them grocery store kibble. What brand? I feed Purina at the moment, but what brand does not really matter so long as it is the proper amount. There is no research -- not one whit -- that shows that one brand of dog food is better than another.

Nor, might I add, is there any research to show that corn in commercial dog food is bad for dogs, or that pumpkin, millet, barley, deer, beaver or any other exotic mix is good.

Why do I feed my dogs kibble? Simple: Kibble has been treated with fire.

While cooking does not cure all ills, it cures most, and that is especially important with meat. The more you know about meat -- any kind of meat -- the more likely you are to order your steaks "well cooked."

Whatever brand of kibble you choose to use, one thing is almost guaranteed: your dog will end up eating better than you do.

Not only is most grocery store dog food balanced for proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, but it has probably been tested in the real world with scores of thousands of dogs thriving on it for many years.

Can most dog owners say that about the food they eat? I think not!

As for dog food being full of snouts, lungs, udders, and shin meat, it most certainly is. It also has chicken feet ground up in it, as well as bones and beaks, and pieces of tail, testicles and cow privates.

All of this is excellent food, and most of it was "human quality" until very recently.

Of course, in the English-speaking world we mostly turn our nose up at such stuff. We demand that all meat be the very choicest cut served on a white napkin placed on top of a foam plate. The meat must be dyed the right color to make it pleasing to the eye, and the whole thing must be shrink-wrapped, dated, bar-coded and placed in a cold packing crate in the super market. Only then will we buy it.

Blood and guts? Testicles and snout? Entrails and feet? Most people shudder at the thought of eating those parts of a pig or cow that nurtured their grandparents not so long ago. Go overseas into the markets of Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia, however, and people are still eating everything, including the squeal. Ox Tail soup? Bones for Ossobuco? Udders, stomachs and lungs for sausage? Testicles for breakfast? All good food.

What is laugh-track funny are the folks who pop up in every dog food debate to talk about the diet of wolves.

You see, whether wolves are chasing caribou in the Arctic, pulling down wild boar in Russia, or stalking buffalo in Kansas, they are all doing the same thing: they are looking for the young, the sick, and the infirm.

A downer cow? To a wolf that's the dinner bell ringing.

Yes, that's right: The preferred diet of the wolf is not cooked backstrap from the pride of the herd, but raw flesh ripped from the diseased rectum of a downer cow.

Funny how that fact never makes it into all these conversations about "natural" dog foods.

Nor is it ever mentioned that wolves eat a lot of rabbit, deer and rats riddles with round worms and other parasites. Disease? A wolf likes nothing better than a diseased animal; they are so much easier to catch.

Unlike your kibble-fed dog, wolves are not eating flesh from healthy animals that have been given vaccines, regular vet checks, dosed with antibiotics, and given unlimited amounts of high-quality feed and clean water.

But that's what our dog food is made out of.

And then, to make it even better, we stir in corn, rice, and wheat in order to increase fiber and add carbohydrates. We also add in vitamins and micronutrients, as well as preservatives to keep the whole thing fresh. Then we grind it all fine, cook it, extrude it, fire it hard into bite-sized nuggets, and put it in hermetically-sealed stay-fresh bags.

Poor dogs! If only they had quality foods!

Bottom line: Relax about what you are feeding your dog.

You are not a bad owner because you feed your dog a commercial kibble bought at the local grocery store.

Nor are you a better owner because you pay a lot more for an expensive product made from exotic ingredients.

Just remember this simple rule: A well-fed dog is never fat. If you truly love your dog, you will never over-feed it.

Evolution of Fishing

Wildlife In Your Head

All He Knows

The First Law of Nonsense

Mount Thor

Yes, that's a real peak, and not a movie backdrop for Lord of the Rings.

Mount Thor is on Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada (way up north and to the far east) and that vertical drop (it's an overhand of about 100 degrees) is the largest in the world at about 5,000 feet.

Lion Cub Stuck in Buffalo Butt

Back in 2012, writing about dog food, I observed that "The preferred diet of the wolf is not cooked backstrap from the pride of the herd, but raw flesh ripped from the diseased rectum of a downer cow."

In fact, that is true for most top end predators, which tend to gravitate towards animals that are already sick or lame, and which tend to break into large carcasses from the rear.

In the video, above, we have a young lion who has gotten his head stuck inside a cape buffalo's butt. Though it's funny on the surface, this actually appears to be a fairly serious situation for the young cub who may end up getting suffocated for its enthusiasm.

The Big Wink at Bad Behavior

A massive Medicare and Medicaid fraud was settled last night for $500 million. This is the second settlement for DaVita in a year -- they were previously nailed for $400 million in Medicare and Medicaid fraud, and it's still not over as the bad actors are being left in place at the top of the company.

As I noted in an earlier post, entitled Cheese and Choke Chains, changing corporate behavior is all about incentivizing the right good actors, and penalizing the right bad actors.

You know what doesn't work?

What doesn't work is levying a penalty 10 years too late, and levying the penalty on the stock holders who did not do the fraud, while letting everyone in the company who planned the fraud, and winked at the fraud while it was going on, keep their jobs, their promotions, their bonuses, their stock options, and their beach houses.

Imagine if we tried to train dogs that way -- by letting them jump on the table to steal the roast, then waiting two weeks to punish them, and then when a punishment is inflicted, we levy it by kicking the neighbor's cat.

Crazy?  No crazier than what we are doing when it comes to corporate crime.

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Fighting In the Streets

Nate T. sends me a post from the Marginal Revolution blog which quotes the late Black Panther and community organizer Huey Newton from his book Revolutionary Suicide:

As our forces built up, we doubled the patrols, then tripled them; we began to patrol everywhere — Oakland, Richmond, Berkeley, and San Francisco. Most patrols were a part of our normal movement around the community. We kept them random, however, so that the police could not set a network to anticipate us. They never knew when or where we were going to show up…The chief purpose of the patrols was to teach the community security against the police, and we did not need a regular schedule for that. We knew that no particular area could be totally defended; only the community could effectively defend and eventually liberate itself. Our aim simply was to teach them how to go about it. We passed out our literature and ten-point program to the citizens who gathered, discussed community defense, and educated them about their rights concerning weapons.

This was a billion years ago, of course. Back then the National Rifle Association was all for gun control and gun-grabbing, provided it was directed at disarming the uppity black folks who had dreams of self-governance and economic empowerment.

A million years later, before the internet, cell phones, MP3 players, Youtube, or Amazon, I worked for a small nonprofit, with a staff of four, focused on trying to forge a common language about the nexus between rights and responsibilities.

I was the primary writer, and the only one with even a little street experience. The other two were lawyers who mostly wrote briefs, did fundraising, and talked to city attorneys.

In any case, we got a grant to write a guide to eradicating street drug markets.  Crack had arrived in 1985, and open air drug markers and drive-by shootings were destroying neighborhoods and families.

What could be done?

That little problem got tossed into my lap.

The resulting publication was entitled The Winnable War:  A Community Guide to Eradicating Street Drug Markets, and it became a decent seller, generating  about $500,000 in sales for the organization over the next two years (I had decided we would publish it in house in case it did well; an unheard of idea back in 1991).

One of the first articles about the study was written by Abe Rosenthal at The New York Times. That piece was quickly followed up by a piece by Neal Peirce praising the new report and suggesting that the little booklet we had produced "may be the best manual ever for citizens trying to rid their neighborhoods of increasingly violent open-air drug markets."

A typical "market" will find bands of young men congregating on sidewalks or in the streets, communicating by a complex set of hand movements, marketing to a parade of automobiles (many from the "respectable" suburbs). Conner describes the open-air markets as "the 7-11 of drug marketing - high volume, quick sales, small-unit sales."

Kids get exposed to the drug trade's most alarming values - lawlessness, violence, sex-for-sale, instant gratification, ostentatious displays of gold jewelry and expensive cars. Elderly people become fearful, stop socializing in the parks. Property values plummet; physical degradation spreads.

The alliance surveyed the nation's largest cities and found 1,500 drug markets operating in 15 of them. Two-thirds of the cities reported the problem was either steady or getting worse.

Perhaps most alarmingly, the alliance found that few cities are pursuing the very tactics against drug markets that have proved highly effective in a number of lead communities.

The group places little hope in police "body counts" of arrested drug dealers, or filling up more prisons with small-time offenders. But it reports rich payoffs in a combination of neighborhood-based anti-drug activism and inventive, targeted community policing aimed at harassing drug markets out of business.

In cities across the country, organized citizen groups have shown how to intimidate drug dealers and their customers by shadowing their movements, taking photos, writing down license numbers. They organize neighborhood cleanups, repair playgrounds, sweep litter and drug paraphernalia off the street.

And while there have been isolated reports of drug-dealer attacks on individual crusaders, the alliance reports attacks on citizen patrols are, nationwide, "extremely rare." Stressing a community-based, not individual, anti-drug effort is said to reduce chances of physical confrontation.

Citizen efforts won't go far, though, unless city governments join in the effort, Conner said. Scattered cities are already showing the way. New York, Boston and others have "padlock laws" to close up properties associated with multiple drug arrests and convictions.

In Yakima, Wash., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., owners of cars seen cruising through drug markets receive postcards warning that their vehicles have been seen in areas of high crime, prostitution and drug activity. Washington, Seattle, Alexandria, Va., and Tampa, Fla., have statutes forbidding loitering with the intent to sell drugs.

Tampa reduced its recognized open-air drug markets from 61 to three in two years. Mayor Sandra Freedman created a 41-member special police force to work closely with housing inspectors and citizen groups in boarding up or razing ''crack shacks," organizing massive neighborhood cleanups and seizing drug dealers' cars.

Charleston's police chief, Ruben Greenberg, used police officers and prisoners conscripted from the local jail to pick up trash, clear vacant lots, tow cars and obliterate graffiti defacing buildings in drug-infested neighborhoods.

What of the argument that drug activity driven out of one neighborhood just re-erupts in another? The alliance acknowledges that's often the case. But the first victimized neighborhood is relieved. The drug dealers' customer base is disrupted. And eventually drug selling and buying are driven behind closed doors - "privatized," one might say.

That may not be enough for people on a crusade to lock up drug dealers and users. Police may complain: It's tougher to compile a dazzling arrest record. But as report co-author Patrick Burns argues, once a single open-air drug market is closed down, "the community benefit is immeasurable."

Before long, we had cities ordering a 1,000 copies at a time, and police chiefs saying they were acolytes. The Brookings Institution asked for an article, and I was tapped to speak at a few law enforcement conferences.

Did it change anything? Maybe a little.

Today the core message of The Winnable War is well understood even if it is not always well operationalized. Organizing communities is hard work.  It takes time, talent, and money  That kind of stuff is always in short supply. Police have unions, constituencies, federal budget support, and self-interest. Jump out squads and mass arrests are flashy and emotionally satisfying, get you a lot of overtime, and run up the statistics sheet, which is always a solid win at promotion time.

Just as important, mass arrests are action that a police department can take unilaterally. Getting cars towed, streets swept, abandoned buildings raised, street lights fixed, median strips mowed, and streets and sidewalks repaired may involve getting coordinated action out of a half dozen or more famously disorganized, intransigent, over-worked maintenance departments where no one is ever fired for not showing up at all. Getting playgrounds built, daycare facilities funded, and bus lines running? Where would you even start with that?

And so like a rat catcher who is paid to catch rats, but is not paid to clean up the trash, sweep the corners, or mow the vegetation, a business is made that is based on busting people.

But just as you cannot trap your way out of a rat problem, so you cannot arrest your way out of a street drug market problem. It takes more than that. You have to understand why the rats are there, what they want, and what they require. Then you have remove their needs and supply the needs of an entirely different kind of animal.

Yes, it's a jungle out there. No disagreement. That's exactly why wildlife biologists are needed.

An E-Collar for Humans?

The new Apple Watch may end up being little more than an e-collar for humans -- one we are lining up to buy.

The old canine "shock collar" is dead, having been replaced with the low-sensation tapping of the modern e-collar with tone, vibration, and 100 levels of stimulation so fine it can be used to teach "place" or "come" on a 7-pound dog.

Perhaps the biggest deal in the world of dogs has yet to be noticed, however:  the arrival of the Apple Watch for humans.

Sales of the Apple Watch have been phenomenal. Pre-order sales surpassed 1.2 million on Day One, as compared to 270,000 for the iPhone and 300,000 for the iPad.

Yes, the Apple Watch can tell time.  

It can also time you, remind you, and find you.  It can give you weather and send and receive text messages.  

Where it may end up being a game changer, however, is in its ability to train you to become a better person.

As CNN notes in an article entitled, Will your Apple Watch program YOU?:

One of the most awaited features of Apple Watch will be its "taptic" engine, a sensory feedback tool derived from gamer joystick technology that allows for personalized tapping vibrations -- a "Yo"-like blip for a work pal or an echo of your own heartbeat captured through an embedded cardio sensor.

... Taptic wrist vibes can also carry a purpose -- reminding you to pick up a carton of eggs on your way home from work, or delivering an insistent flick from a client demanding a call-back. Therein lies a brave new response in human conditioning. All of us are accustomed to electronic signals -- an alarm clock in the morning or a pop-up calendar invite on your phone. But there's something Manchurian Candidate-like about a digital prompt delivered palpably to your wrist. Sure, the watch is a transmitter, but it's the person who's being programmed. As an accessory, smart watches are perfect for new spatial positioning technology, such as Apple's iBeacon, which can triangulate a user's exact location inside a building and allow targeted messaging when deployed in, say, a supermarket.

... Wall Street Journal tech columnist Christopher Mims recently extolled the promise of iBeacon synched to your wrist device. He wrote: "Imagine walking into a grocery store with a shopping list on your watch, which knows your location so precisely that it can plot a route through the store, saving you the frustration of wandering from aisle to aisle, wondering where that one particular item is."

Right.

Imagine a wife or business partner who can tap a husband or associate to get their attention in a store or meeting.

Imagine a watch that taps you, four times a day, to remind you to knock out ten push ups while you are at your desk.

Have a bad habit you want to break? Your phone could be programmed to remind you to do the right thing -- or to warn you off the bad thing.

As I noted a few days ago, in this increasingly busy and frenetic world, we are going to be using more robots to do our chores, and we are going to need more electronic prompts to keep everything running on the rails.

The new Apple Watch recognizes this and its "tapping" modem, tracking, tagging, and prompts may end up being little more than an e-collar for humans -- one we are lining up to buy.

Who among us does not wish to be a better person?

Who among us could not benefit from better habits, and better and more consistent direction and reminders?

And if all it takes is a few dozen "Pavlov Pokes" to permanently end a self-rewarding bad habit, who among us would say no?

Related Posts:

• E-Collars, the Natural Paroxysms of Innovation, and the Back-to-the-Future Future of Dog Training
• Is there an App for Monitoring Your Dog?
• Electronic Task Monitoring and Training Assistance
• The Radical Notion of Consequences
• The Limits and Strengths of E-Collars
• You're Not an Abusive Dog Trainer, Are You?
• Going Negative as Dog Trainer Marketing Tool
• Harry Potter Dog Training
• A Brief History of Dog Training 
• Saving Barking Dogs With Effective Electronics

Four Types of Poisonous Snakes in VA and MD

Copperhead Photo by John White


Timber Rattlesnake Photo by John White



Cottonmouth Photo by John White



Canebreak Rattlesnake Photo by John White


The copperhead is the only poisonous snake found across all of Maryland and Virginia. Though its bite is rarely fatal to humans, it can be fatal to a terrier who is likely to be bit several times if it finds one in a hedgerow or prowling for mice near a barn.

The good news is that copperheads are not quite as common as some people believe -- most snakes believed to be copperheads are misidentified. Nonvenomous snakes that look a bit like copper heads include eastern milk snake and the northern water snake, but these snakes have round pupils while a copperhead and other poisonous snakes have yes with vertically slitted, elliptically shaped pupils

Cottonmouths are rarely found far from water and generally only in very swampy parts. Just because you see a large black snake swimming does not mean it is a cottonmouth -- it it much more likely to be a black rat snake.

The timber rattlesnake is generally found only in the western parts of Virginia and Maryland, generally in the mountains near rocks and ledges.

The canebreak rattlesnake is quite rare, and you are not very likely to come across one. The good news is that if you do, the rattles will let you know that you have a rattlesnake and what to expect.
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Kent State: 45 Years Ago Today

When you call out the National Guard to suppress demonstrations, do not expect the American people to forget.

As in Baltimore, the actions of authorities at Kent State, over several days, served to increase tension, not reduce it.

As with Baltimore, there was a lot of hot rhetoric by conservatives seeking to rationalize illegal actions; in this case the illegal and secret bombing of Cambodia.

At a news conference in Kent, the day before the shootings, Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes said of campus protesters:

"They're worse than the Brownshirts, and the Communist element, and also the Night Riders, and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America."

Actually, Governor, these were America's young adults; people who simply thought we could do better than the secret murder of innocent people 9,000 miles away.

And guess what?  They were right.

Dogswell is a Ridiculous Product

I stopped at the local Harris Teeter, and saw these dog treats being advertised. 

The bullshit hipster logo caught my eye, and then the wording:  "VITALITY FOR HOLISTIC WELLNESS."

I picked up the bag to read the ingredients (it's made of exhausted old laying hens, peas, sweet potatoes, carrots, and spinach) and was shocked at how light it was for the price. $7.29 for 5 ounces.

That means this stuff costs over $24 a pound!

A quick Google tells me this stuff is being foisted on gullible shoppers by one "Marco Giannini, who grew up with a German shepherd named Emily that developed hip dysplasia."

Right. Another "get-rich quick" fellow who knows nothing about dogs is trolling for low-information gullibles. I wondered if he used to peddle tobacco and junk food like the guy who created "Blue Buffalo"? And the answer is... just about. His last company was a "natural-beverage company called Clear Day" and it went bust. 

Giannini, of course, has no background in nutrition of any kind, no expertise in dogs, and does not even make his own dog food. His whole modus operandi appears to be classic "lick and stick" where a no-name company, without a steady sources of suppliers or a track record in food, designs a label to stick on a bag of stuff that has received little or no testing. The only difference here is the jaw-dropping pricing. With some humor, I note that the "Quality Assurance Manager" at "Dogswell" does not even have a last name!

Meanwhile, in the same store, whole boneless pork tenderloin is being sold for $3.15 a pound, and whole frozen chicken wings are being sold for $2.50 a pound.

As always, feed what you want, but in the pantheon of bullshit companies cranking out ridiculous products at incredible prices, it's hard to beat "Dogswell".

Passing the Torch

Ben E. King, who wrote this song, died this week.

May 20 will be David Letterman's last day hosting his iconic show.

Stephen Colbert will pick up the reigns at The Late Show.

Ignorance Has a Permanent Cure

B.B. King, age 89, is now in home hospice. 

Electronic Task Monitoring and Training Assistance

Droplet is a little button that you push after you have done something. That button sends a pre-programmed message that crosses it off your (or someone else's) list, or else alerts them that something has just happened  

Fail to push the button, and it sends you -- or someone else -- a text message that says something was not done.

Sounds like a small thing, but it's a genius training tool, and also a confidence builder that your pet-sitter is actually feeding and walking Fido twice a day, as promised, and that Timmy is cleaning out the rabbit cage twice a week, as promised.

The single greatest problem humans have is lack of consistency.

We fail to take our medication every day, we fail to walk and train our dogs, and we ignore the backyard until a farm combine is needed instead of a suburban lawnmower.

In this increasingly busy and frenetic world, we are going to be using more robots to do our chores, and we are going to need more electronic prompts to keep everything running on the rails.

This is a Kickstarter campaign that has raised $64,000 of its $80,000 goal with 17 days to go. This will happen.

Coffee and Provocation

The History of the World in a Cup

“Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks, waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolaty cafe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top.” - Sarah Vowell, from her book The Partly Clouded Patriot.

Pit Bull Was Patient Zero in Colorado Plague
It seems a Pit Bull was "patient zero" in a four-person outbreak of the pneumonic Black Plague in Colorado. This was the first animal-to-human plague transmission in the U.S. since 1924.  The Bubonic Plague came to the U.S. around 1907 from black rats that slipped in from China.  Plague is now endemic in the western Prairie Dog population.

From Follows Function
Never mind if that sentiment is not even true in that sentence. Here's a nice design wormhole to check out. Not dog related, but cool.

How Dangerous is it to Fly a Dog?
And is there really any statistical safety difference between one airline and another?

These Important Animals May Go Extinct...
...if we don't start eating them.

Jeb Bush Supports an Illegal Alien Amnesty
In other words, he is toast in the primary.

A Digital Great Leap Forward in Civil Liberties
"You know, they used to be able to get away with lying about it," he explained. "And there were lots of people in the establishment anxious to believe them over anybody black. Thank God for cell phone video cameras. Thank God for cell phone video cameras. Because now the truth is finally coming out. And it's ugly." - attorney William Murphy

Elon Musk May Change Everything
The future is owned by the rich first, but it comes to all soon enough, and with solar cell prices falling fast, solar cell efficiency soaring, and home battery systems now cheaper than a transmission rebuild on your Honda, the era of coal-fired power plants, telephone poles and downed power lines may soon be behind us. Elon Musk is the Game Changer of the 21st Century.

The Terrorists on our Roads
When you glance in your mirror, or at the car next to you at a stop light,you do not feel safer if it's a police car. You feel anxiety. Tension. And for a reason. Police almost never stop crime in progress, and they close fewer and fewer serious crime cases every year despite better forensics. In fact, for 99% of all people, all the police have ever done in your life is to write you an unending series of tickets for minor infractions and hassles. Now comes another startling statistic: American police officers kill more Americans every month than all terrorists at home, abroad, or in any theater of war combined.

Feed the Good and Weed The Bad
Let me say something about Bernie Sanders. I'm donating. He will shape the debate ahead, and in the right direction. He raised $1.5 million on Day One of his presidential campaign. For $10 a month for 6 months, you can be part of the hammer that shapes the future. Never will so little money do more good. If you play pool, you know that a three-ball carom can set up the next shot. This is that. 

Robert Reich on the TransPacific Partnership
I trust Robert Reich with this nation. So should you. Watch this. Simple. Clear. Smart.

Fish On Friday

What Blogs or Web Sites Should I Be Reading?

Put your suggestions into the comments. 

I read about 250 blogs and web sites a day using Feedly.

I try to fence out nonsense, but I am always looking for interesting, useful and fun, and a lot of good blogs are moribund or dead. Not every one has sitzfleisch.

Most people just sit on the train, or the doctor's office, or at traffic lights and they no nothing. I dictate, read, take notes, scan emails, look for pictures, listen to books. I am always looking for more input.

The Power of Frames

George Bernard Shaw once remarked that “It’s best to come at a man through his religion rather than your own.”

Religion is the right world to use in the persuasion game because it encompasses the essence of frames.

What’s a frame?

A frame can be a story, a metaphor, or a value system.

It is the structure through which you see and understand the world.

Frames are more important than facts.

Let me say that again: Frames are more important than facts.

What that means is that if facts are presented to most people, and those facts are counter to the frame, they will throw out the facts and keep the frame.

Think religion.

Religion says we must believe on faith alone, and in the absence or rejection of fact and observation.

Think the American Kennel Club. The frame here is that their dog shows produce “better” dogs and never mind all evidence to the contrary.

Frames govern a vast amount of what you think.

They underpin your politics, your charity, your acquisitions, your diet and exercise decisions, and your very sense of self.

And they also underpin what you think about dogs.

And while your frames can change over time, they tend to be quite robust, which is why George Bernard Shaw says it is always best to come at a man through his religion, rather than your own.

What frames do dog owners typically bring to the table? Among the most common are these:

• I am a good person. I am a wise, powerful, loving, and important person worthy of adoration.
• I am smart and discerning. I am above average, if not very nearly genius.
• I believe in justice. People who do good should get their just rewards, while those who do bad work should get their just consequences.
• My dog is like a member of my family. They are my “fur baby.”

How do you start a conversation with someone who personifies these frames? How do you teach them?

The good news is that we know.

What we have in the world of dogs is a recapitulation of what we have had in the world of children.

How do we teach children?

• Patience.
• Repetition.
• Consistency.
• Consequences.

Or at least in theory.

You see, a lot of folks grow up in really dysfunctional homes, and these people acquire dogs too.

These folks end up not trusting people to be patient, consistent, or fair.

They may have had parents who misinterpreted the Biblical admonition to not “spare the rod and spoil the child.”

They may have grown up in an alcoholic home or one where a parent had mental issues of some kind.

And, to be honest, even in “normal” homes, busy parents often vacillate between indifference and controlling, permissive and authoritarian, if for no other reason than both parents are often on a different page when it comes to how to rear the kids.

Any wonder why these folks are not big on e-collars, slip collars, prong collars, or any collars at all?

Any wonder they are much more comfortable with food and praise alone?

• Related Post
  ** The Dog Owner's Mirror

Wild Goose Chase

Source

A native Red Fox objects to a pair of Canada Geese.  "Damn foreigners taking jobs ways from British geese."

Spring Yard Maintenance Time

I cut the hot tub out of the greenhouse.

A future something!

A 360 sq. ft. perennial bed to plant and mulch in the next two weeks.

Back yard starts to green up.

Back yard

Back yard to pond (getting filled).

Moxie on the driveway down to the street,

Steps up to the back yard.

Pond with bench that needs replacing or repair,

What White Men Think, And Why They Are Wrong