Delicious Martini

A while ago I posted a link to Winnie the Pooh with a (non- drinkable) Martini. In response, Bruce Douglas sent me pics of the most wonderful example of that venerable British colonial rifle I have ever seen. I WANT one!

He wrote: "Great silver work and goatskin sling are tasteful (by Khyber standards)... A friend thought it started out life as a sporting rifle--not a cut-down military. It weighs a hair under 7 1/2 lbs. The only markings (other than in the picture) are on the falling block--1ooks like your standard Birmingham proof, the other single small mark probably stands for "Clive has a job here too." My sense of this rifle is that it was once owned, carried, and used by a man who truly appreciated it...well worn, but mechanically in very good shape, and adorned tastefully. One of the weak points is the silver sling-swivels--they just don't wear well."

Needless to say, I'd take it anyway.

Black Hole

Reader (and writer you should read-- see here and here and here, for some examples) John McLoughlin has just visited a most amazing store in Los Alamos.

He writes:

"Here's a fun place to visit. I've appended some images from today's trip to the Black Hole down in Los Alamos, an eerily amazing place that sells surplus laboratory equipment from the vast government laboratories up there. You can find all manner of weirdness here. I go down about twice a year when I get cabin fever.

"Here's a view of the Black Hole's yard, with a bomb and a short length of solid stainless steel pipe (standing on end to immediate right of bomb, behind flags). The church building in the background among the trees was bought by Ed Grothus [owner]
and is used for storage of more Black Hole stuff. He calls it the Church of Annihilation."

"Here's a Bombflower welded together by the Black Hole's owner, Ed Grothus. He's about 84, and quite a character, a former Lab scientist who turned into a peacenik scavenger."



"Another view of the Black Hole yard. That big pipe is the same stainless steel stuff as in the prior photograph; I can walk through it standing up. You could buy some if you wanted, and keep it in your living-room, just for fun."



I need to go there!

Wrestling Dogs of Central Asia

Today, several friends sent me this link to a New York Times piece on Asian "fighting" dogs.

I put "fighting" in quotes because the practice of testing wolf-guarding flock dogs, non-lethally, is an ancient one in Asia, pre-dating the mostly Islamic societies that now practice it, and is more akin to wrestling than fighting. The dogs signal when they have "had enough", a signal honored both by their canine opponents and by their owners, who have no desire to have their herd guardians crippled. But owners will generally not breed to a dog that will not stand up to an opponent. (I should mention that wolves are as common in most Central Asian back country as coyotes here, but more dangerous).

You might consider the practice a form of field trials for wolf- protection dogs.

Even scientists in the Stans and the Caucasus test their herd (and Border Patrol) breeders thus. I am in possession of a paper by two Azeri scientists (as yet unpublished so I can't post it yet) defending these matches while still deploring western dog fights.

Mary Scriver wrote: "Fascinating, Steve. Sounds like they are more like St. Bernards or Kuvasz or Great Pyrenees among the dogs we know. But the dogs look as though they'd just as soon skip the brandy kegs and knock back some vodka."

I replied: "You are exactly right. I suspect these are the ancestors of all that stuff. Similar ones also in Turkey-- here is one in the distance with a spike collar and a collar in a shop."








Matt also saw the St. Bernard resemblance:

"These dogs in the story look like tough customers. I was looking at their faces and kept thinking they looked familiar. Then it hit me: St. Bernards! What a dog the St Bernard must once have been...."

Me: "All the same descent I'm sure-- what the Romans called "Mollossian dogs" when they first came to Europe.

"I'd rather see them wrestle than be turned into drooling decerebrate mutants like modern show St. Bernards any time."

More pics; Libby with a tobet, the Kazakh version; and a good pic of the same dog. Fierce only when they have to be.

Matt here with a notice about the elephant in the room...

Steve and I were just musing on the significance (if any) of living in the last two states in which cockfighting is legal. I don't think it will be the case for long. I am not an advocate of pitting animals, but I think I understand it: the basic principle, and even the basic appeal. The few cockfighters I know are not simpletons, thugs, compulsive gamblers or drug dealers. They love their animals (no hyperbole) and know them very well. Moreover, these men are part of an actual native culture which---anymore---I am finding to be of value almost regardless of context.

I asked Steve, "Can we blog on this?"

He replied, "Yes. I've been thinking about how."

It's tricky, a little. I don't think you can dance around the AR and hunting and dog breeding and coursing and falconry realms and not in good faith address pit fighting.

My own position would NOT be in knee-jerk opposition, just to offer up a sacrificial lamb. For one, I don't really care much about pit fighting either way. It's just not my thing (which, incedentally, is how I replied to our city's animal control officer when, in a very cordial discussion some months ago, he asked me directly how I felt about it. My main concern---and part of the reason for that meeting---is that falconry not be confused with cockfighting. Let the two activities defend themselves from separate charges, at least.)

But more importantly, the "sacrificial lamb" theory doesn't work. The falconers who, in California some months ago, wanted to let the coursing enthusiasts twist in the wind should take note: The animal rights crowd wants it all. They are insatiable. They are not out to split hairs on these issues.

Consider the idea that these Russian dogs are being tested (and not "pitted" for its own sake). These dogs have a tough job (defending sheep from wolves!) and need to be demonstrably tough in order to make the grade for breeding. But instead of accepting that important distinction, the AR position would predictably be: "So what? A 'legitimate explanation' for an illigitimate job (sheep protection) is no argument at all."

Put simply, the animal rightists would rather have NO sheep to protect! And thus, no protection dogs needed.

Which begs the question: "OK, but what should these rural Russians eat, if not the meat of the sheep in need of protection? What should they wear, if not the wool of the sheep in need of protection?"

And to those questions, regardless what answers they give in debate, their real answer is, "We don't care."

Steve agrees, with the caveat: "But that's the argument they can't make to the public!"

Around the Web...

... first, then a bit more. Some new work completed to deadline-- more about it when accepted. And maybe it is time to announce that there is a book contract in play. Or maybe I'm crazy to even mention it, since it has been in negotiation since September with no resolution (I will NOT answer questions yet!)

Anyway...

Chas has an interesting post indicating a Central Asian origin for skiing. I snarkily commented that everything originated in the Altai; Peculiar did me one better by linking to several of my posts demonstrating this thesis (be sure to click on each separate word in the phrase "anything good they didn't invent")

I keep insisting that eagles are serious predators. At Never Yet Melted, David Zincavage links to a story about two Wedge- tailed eagles attacking a paraglider. I am not shocked.

Bad news; A typical jury (no comment) has found the PETA functionaries who lied about their intentions and killed and dumped 83 adoptable dogs and cats innocent of animal cruelty. If killing AND EATING chickens is "Holocaust on a plate" what in God's name is surreptitiously killing 83 animals and putting them in a dumpster? Maybe it's OK if you just throw them away (with the best of motives) and don't eat them. Read The Whole Thing, please. O tempora!

More Decline and Fall. Could this be the most amazing piece of post- modern Brit wimpery yet? Advice from Tony McNulty, the "Minister for Police and Security", on what to do if you see an old lady being mugged:

"Jeremy: You see a young man looking aggressive, shouting at an old woman, what do you do? You retreat and ring the police?

"Tony McNulty: I think you should in the first instance. It may well be the simply shouting at them, blowing your horn or whatever else deters them and they go away.

"Jeremy: He’s now hitting her and the police haven’t come, what do you do then?

"Tony McNulty: The same the same, you must always ...

"Jeremy: Still wait?

"Tony McNulty: Get back to the police, try some distractive activities whatever else.

"Jeremy: What, jump up and down?

"Tony McNulty: But I would say you know, sometimes that that may well work."

And, to leave you on a cheerier note: John Carlson of Prairie Ice has just returned to Montana from the Antarctic via Chile and Florida. Enjoy his cultural, ecological, and climactic jet lag!

Around the Web

I am deep in writing a (paid!) piece on among other things the help dogs gave to Clovis man in his invasion of North America, so will still be posting lightly. But there are some things out there you should see.

Blog wonkery: we are now on "New" Blogger. I (miraculously) have not had much trouble but Reid and many others have.

Recent evidence of megafauna extinctions in Australia once again confirms that no human culture is innocent of the tendency towards "overkill", despite PC claims. (This has a lot to do with my work- in- progress).

As California tries to ban trans- fats, Arizona day- cares forbid fresh fruit and garden produce. HT Roseann, who also has alot of new stuff up you should read.

DEcline and Fall: from Gates of Vienna comes this amazing tale of the English police. Not only were they unhelpful to the victim of a burglar-- they threatened to arrest him if he offered a reward to get his stolen goods back!

"“Then a couple of weeks later I got a phone call from the police warning that I could be prosecuted for trying to buy stolen goods.

"I said that they had not done very much to get my things back.

"They said that they had everything under control, but I pointed out to them they had not even come round to take the serial numbers of the computers.”

"Under section 23 of the Theft Act 1968, it is illegal to advertise rewards for return of goods stolen or lost using words to the effect that no questions will be asked.

"Anyone convicted faces a fine of up to £100 and will get a criminal record."

If you have not yet visited Dr. Hypercube's "Diary of a Mad Natural Historian" let me tempt you with this entry on elephants and Howdah pistols and this one on parthenogenetic (?) frogs.

More in a little-- I actually AM suffering from some buggy problems that make it hard to
link without typing out URL's.

Later if I finish a draft of my work: photos including of a friend's new Ferruginous hawk and a couple of another friend's unusual rifle.

Letter from Istanbul

Our foreign correspondent, Phillip Grayson (a Magdalenian, I say with pride) is finally settled in Istanbul and sends a letter on the Hrant Dink matter.

Dink was an ethnic Armenian and a liberal in the best and true sense. He insisted on his Turkish as well as his Armenian identity and was no mere spokesman for the Armenian diaspora. A liberal in the true sense, he denounced the French law not allowing one to deny the Armenian genocide as well as the Turkish one denying it.

Here is Phillip:

Istanbul is mourning the death of Hrant Dink. The reporter was shot dead in front of his paper’s offices by a seventeen-year-old man. Conspiracy theories abound. It was Armenians trying to pull the country apart, French agents trying to ruin Turkey’s EU bid, so on, so forth. A massive swarm of mourners followed his corpse through the city to its grave. Many of the same people who protested outside Dink’s trial, calling him Anti-Turkish, an enemy of state, as he was convicted of violating law 301, the increasingly famous anti-free speech law that prohibits, “insulting Turkishness,” the same law that ensured Orhan Pamuk the Nobel Prize when he was tried under it, worded vaguely enough to convict almost anyone and interpreted even more loosely throughout the country. Essentially the law is used by the government to turn the Turkish people against liberal intellectuals. It worked very well with Dink, an ethnic Armenian Turk, succeeding in silencing him.
Conspiracy theories abound. The killer was arrested the day after the murder, wearing the same clothes, bright, distinctive hat and all, that he had been seen in through security cameras and numerous eye-witnesses, the same clothes he was wearing in images shown around the clock on every television channel in the country, carrying the gun he had used in the murder.
Conspiracy theories abound. The government denies that Dink had asked for protection before the murder. Two days before he was shot, Dink wrote that he felt like a pigeon, constantly looking over his shoulder, always on the lookout. It was clear to him, it was clear to everyone, that he was going to be killed.
Conspiracy theories abound here because the truth is obvious and illegal to state. Hrant Dink was murdered by Turkey, through article 301, because he wrote articles opposing the current administration.
It’s difficult for me to say what this means for Turkey. The shows of sympathy are encouraging, but plainly hypocritical. Pamuk remains largely despised throughout the country because of propaganda issued against him and the anti-Turkish stigma so easily applied with 301, so damaging in the eyes of a surprisingly touchy brand of nationalism. Dink was even more hated. The most encouraging message to be found from the entire situation seems to be that the Turkish people do not want to see opponents of the government murdered in the middle of busy city streets, they simply want them jailed or driven into exile.
I wanted to say that Istanbul straddles two continents, stretches from the Middle East to Europe, the Muslim world to the modern world, et c et c. I wanted to write about a girl in headscarf on the subway, whose long dress lifted slightly as she sat to reveal strappy spiked heels. This is a city of contradictions, that’s still true, but now, they seem more like conflicts.
It’s such a bizarre feeling, walking through this modern, civilized, often exhilarating city, and realizing that the government is still killing people over freedom of speech issues. It’s as though there is some dark tension straining to hold these vastly different worlds together, or perhaps struggling to push them apart, to take a more hopeful view.
So Istanbul is mourning Hrant Dink, and I mourn a little for Istanbul, and hate it a little, because the time for being heroic by speaking freely is long gone. There should be no need for courage in these matters. But apparently there is.

Riding High

This picture of Lauren age 13 and Travis age 9 on Connie's mare Squirt was taken just off of our front porch in Tehachapi. It's one of my favorite family pictures.

I was reminded of this by Heidi's post about horses and her family. Of course, I said before there have been other horsemen in my family.

Old Drum

I was thinking about my unsuccessful hunt on Sunday, and how totally unaffected by my failure was my dog Rina. She was just as happy at the end of the hunt as she was at the beginning, and was still busy finding birds long after my hawk had given up trying to catch them.

I wrote in my falconry blog: "Most folks will help you spend your winnings, but fewer will be your friends in defeat. This is one of the great and oft-acknowledged benefits of owning a dog." Not exactly ground-breaking news, but true enough.

On reading the day's entry, a friend forwarded the eulogy of Old Drum, a coonhound killed unjustly in 1869 and avenged in court by his outraged master. The trial was eventually won ($50 award to the former owner) in large part by this moving passage, delivered by the owner's legal counsel.

For all I know, this story is the stuff of urban legend, but the words attributed to lawyer George Graham Vest should live on nonetheless. I wonder if PETA have anything so profound as this to say in support of an end to all dogs:

“Gentlemen of the Jury, the best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it the most. A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.”

“Gentleman of the Jury, a man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and the sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert he remains. When riches take wings and reputation fall to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.”

Winner

.....of the January odd-ball band name contest. Salt Martians?

Glimpse of the Future

Have Toyota Prius taxi-cabs made it to your town yet? This is the first one I've seen here. Actually, my previous general observation about taxis in this town has been what a high percentage here are made by Mercedes-Benz.

More Public Art

Last Fall I posted on some unusual sidewalk art that we sometimes see here in town, but I was taken aback at this inflatable, multi-tentacled, organic-looking thing installed on the top of an art gallery downtown. I suppose it might have been put up in honor of the annual Santa Barbara Film Festival that had our downtown set all ahoo last week.

Saturday evening I walked past the Arlington Theater where the street had been blocked off. A gang of workmen was setting up awnings and special lights for a red capet walk. That evening, Tom Cruise was set to be the celebrity presenter to give Will Smith a Master of Modern Cinema award. I like Will Smith and he has done some good work, but how old is he? Isn't he a little short in the tooth to be getting a career achievement award?

It was just five-ish, but people were already lined up (in the drizzle) at the barracades and staking out tables at Carlito's Cafe across the street to look at the big names.

Letter To a Friend

Like catch-and-release fly fishing, there is such a thing as catch-and-release falconry. It is not so widespread a practice among falconers as it is among anglers, but its practitioners espouse many of the same arguments in support of it. For what it's worth, I strongly disapprove.

This week I received a very cordial letter (actual words on paper!), with a collection of vintage hawking photos and copies of two articles, all by a longtime falconer from the Southwest. The letter expressed the author's concern, or maybe just his puzzlement, about my position on catch-and-release, which I outlined a couple years ago in an essay printed in our falconers' association newsletter.

My correspondent is no fake falconer. He has been hawking successfully since before I was born. His articles are well-written and sincere, and correctly point out the fact that some falconers have been releasing game systematically for centuries. There was once an entire branch of our sport dedicated to catching herons and other large, "uneatable" birds, ringing them for posterity with a metal band and then releasing them. Purely sporting.

My reply to this falconer follows. I reprint it here with Steve's blessing, because I think it touches on some issues that define our sport and that frame my own defense against anti-hunting / anti-cruelty sentiment. Naturally, I don't expect the anti-crowd to split these hares, but it's useful to me, at least, to know where I stand.

I wrote:

"... I was, as you guessed, very interested to see your accounts of catch-and-release falconry. My opposition to releasing live game is not categorical. I have hastened to pull my hawks off “miscellaneous” animals, especially dangerous ones such as cats and raccoons that are sometimes taken by accident. My intention is foremost to save the hawk from harm and, if possible, prevent any harm to the prey animal also. These are exceptional circumstances, more frequently occurring with very young hawks and rarely after a good first season of successful hunting. Since I tend to fly the same individual birds for multiple seasons, this doesn’t happen often.

Another, perhaps related, circumstance would be one in which a prey animal manages to escape numerous attempts on its life by the hawk, yet remains “catchable” in some vulnerable refuge of last resort. These are frequent enough situations, as you know. In these cases, if I do not need food for the hawk or want it for myself, I’ll leave the animal alone, knowing it might not be so lucky next time.

That said, my goal at the onset of every hunt is to kill what I’m hunting. The pleasures of a day in the field with a hawk are manifold (of course!), but the point of the day, in my opinion, is to seek, find and catch what I’m after.

My goal is not the glory of the flight. Falconry is not primarily an aesthetic pursuit for me. I hope that doesn’t sound monstrous! I place a high value the art of falconry, but I expect it to emerge as a natural outcome of the hunting, not the reverse.

My feeling is this: My hawk is serious about his hunting. My dog is serious about hers. The prey is deadly serious about getting away from us. Who am I to take this situation so lightly as to make it into a game? You asked: “Who says falconry has to be a blood sport?” I say the animals do, and so do I.

Compassion, moderation, conservation—these are not alien concepts to me. I understand that catch-and-release falconry is often explained as a humane means of enjoying sport today while preserving it for the future.

But my approach to honoring these ideals is, instead of hunting and releasing caught game, to cultivate an appreciation of natural limits. The natural limitations of falconry include the hawk’s fitness (and mine), its skill as a hunter (and mine), the hawk’s appetite, the weather, our available land and the abundance of quarry, to name a few. My personal definition of success in hunting serves as another limitation: A hunt is successful when it ends in a kill. It is not necessarily more successful with multiple kills, but depending on one’s goal for the day (e.g., stocking the summer larder, or building drive in a young hawk), more is sometimes better. In either event, the hawk’s desire to kill motivates the hunt, and its willingness to continue—not mine—sets the limit.

When do we stop? That’s the question for which the sport’s natural limitations provide the best answer. Were I to rely on my own, sometimes insatiable, appetite for hunting to inform me when it’s time to call it quits, I might never leave the field! As Joan Osborne sings it, “How can a man let conscience be his guide, when it’s he who must keep it satisfied?”

Nothing my hawks kill is wasted. The quarry feeds the bird or both of us. The hawk eats no more than it needs from day to day, and I freeze no more than I will use before the next hunting season begins. I hunt a series of several fields in rotation, switching to the next if slips become scarce—although I have never exhausted any of my fields, as years of consistent daily bags show. My belief, based loosely on my experience studying the ecology of wild raptors (three wonderful years tracking radio-marked Cooper’s hawks, dawn to dusk) and also on the accumulated hawking experience of myself and friends, is that game populations need no special protection from falconry. Conservation is served by matching the right hawk with the right quarry (usually meaning its natural prey) in its native habitat, and by following the natural limitations of the sport.

As I get older, I appreciate these limitations all the more. I now practice a form of falconry that requires little driving and a lot of walking. It needs no gadgets or electronic aids; it is extremely low-tech hawking. My commonest quarries include small birds and rodents, which my hawk eats on the spot. A typical hunt entails a hike in a wide circle of fallow cow pasture and ends when the hawk is full. With a young family to look after, I hunt no more than four days a week, and I can manage only a single hawk.

So I see moderation and conservation as integral to my falconry, despite the fact that I do not release what we catch. But what about the “humane treatment” of our prey—is that enhanced by letting it go?

I don’t think so. My pet phrase for the reason why is that “there are no barbless hawks!” True, the largest animal that any hawk is capable of catching can sometimes be released without apparent harm. But I doubt (after cleaning thousands of animals brought to bag by hawks) that “apparent harm” is the same thing as “no harm.” If its talons are sharp, and its appetite and physical condition are good, my bird can be expected to do considerable harm to its prey in a short period of time. It is literally trying to kill the animal, and it is well equipped to do so.

I disagree that we can assume released prey runs or flies away no worse for wear. But let’s imagine, for a minute, that it invariably does so. What have we then accomplished? In my view, we have accomplished by catch-and-release the reducing of our grand, natural sport to a mere human game. We have ignored the serious intentions of our good hawks and dogs and shown such disrespect to our quarry that we would, in effect, be risking its pain and discomfort to satisfy our aesthetic needs and nothing else. We deny our prey the basic honor of escaping by virtue of superior ability on the one hand, and the gift of a swift dispatch on the other. Say: Do we think this duck is not going to die another day? Do we imagine that the wild hawk or owl that finally does it in will consider its pain while eating the bird to death?

In my view, if we intend to hunt at all, killing what we catch is the most “humane” course. While my tiercel Harris’ hawk is well equipped to catch and mortally wound a rabbit, I’m better at killing one quick. Moreover, I’m the only one of us who gives that a moment’s thought.

I hope the above rambling provides some answer to your inquiry about my feelings. Please note, there are certainly no hard feelings on my end and no serious disagreement over this topic, which must remain a matter of personal choice.

More Maynard Dixon

I have continued reading the book about Maynard Dixon that I discussed in an earlier post and discovered that in the spring of 1930 he spent some weeks sketching and painting near the town of Tehachapi, California. Tehachapi is set in the Tehachapi Mountains, the southernmost range of the Sierra Nevada, and is a beautiful place where we were fortunate to live for six years. Dixon's work captures the spirit and beauty of the place and I scanned these paintings to share with you. The one above is "Storm on the Tehachapi".

The one above is called "Deer Heaven" and shows the oak savannah habitat that is so common in the area. This won second prize in the annual exhibit of the San Francisco Art Association in 1930. The top prize was won by another Tehachapi painting of Dixon's, "Merging of Spring and Winter" which wasn't illustrated in this book. "Deer Heaven" was also included in the Corcoran Gallery of Art's Thirteenth Exhibition of Contemporary American paintings in 1932-1933.

This painting is titled "Springtime on Bear Mountain." Dixon was staying in the small community of Caliente that lies on the north side of Bear Mountain, and this is a view from that side. While we were there, we lived in Bear Valley at the foot of the south side of this mountain. The jury at the San Francisco Art Association exhibit also singled this painting out for praise.

And I especially like this painting with its Native American theme that is titled "Neolithic Afternoon." One of the charming aspects of the landscape of the area are these clusters of large granite boulders that randomly dot the valley floors.

PETA and the Gay Sheep

They just won't quit! Margory Cohen just sent me a link to this NYT piece on how PETA has distorted the research efforts of a biologist working with sheep, leading to misrepresentations of his work and even death threats!

"Dr. Roselli, a researcher at the Oregon Health and Science University, has searched for the past five years for physiological factors that might explain why about 8 percent of rams seek sex exclusively with other rams instead of ewes. The goal, he says, is to understand the fundamental mechanisms of sexual orientation in sheep. Other researchers might some day build on his findings to seek ways to determine which rams are likeliest to breed, he said.

"But since last fall, when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals started a campaign against the research, it has drawn a torrent of outrage from animal rights activists, gay advocates and ordinary citizens around the world — all of it based, Dr. Roselli and colleagues say, on a bizarre misinterpretation of what the work is about.

"The story of the gay sheep became a textbook example of the distortion and vituperation that can result when science meets the global news cycle."

(Snip)

"The controversy spilled into the blog world, with attacks on Dr. Roselli, his university and Oregon State University, which is also involved in the research. PETA began an e-mail campaign that the universities say resulted in 20,000 protests, some with language like “you are a worthless animal killer and you should be shot,” “I hope you burn in hell” and “please, die.” "

Libby suggests mandatory spay- neuter for PETA members and other A. R. activists. Hmmmm....

Flight Medal?

You may have read about the National Guardsmen who fled their post under the threat of invasion by armed intruders from Mexico and are now being rewarded for it.

Reader Bruce Douglas suggests a proper medal:

Evil Wolves? (and Other Predators)

Reid sent LAT article on wolves returning to Germany which seems to indicate that wolves are as polarizing there as here.

"..Joachim Bachmann, a hunter with a wall full of trophies, is not so lyrical when it comes to the wolf's reappearance amid the birch and pine of the eastern woods in Saxony.

"In today's Germany, the wolf is a "protected species." Mention these two words and you'd better duck, because Bachmann can't quite get his mind around how a sheep-eating machine should not be shot on sight. It bothers him even when he sits at the big table in his big house looking out the window to a damp land speckled with paw prints.

" "What positive thing does a wolf bring to nature? Nothing," he says, cutting his schnitzel and salted potatoes.

"There is something else out beyond the winter grass that perturbs him too. Down the road, past a church and through a forest so dense it seems like walking through the bristles on a hairbrush, a woman Bachmann describes as a misguided Little Red Riding Hood charts the personalities and nocturnal habits of wolf packs.

"Gesa Kluth's boots are muddy and her maps are worn; to Bachmann, the biologist is an infuriatingly dedicated state-funded wolf lover."

Sounds distressingly like home!

Somewhere at the root of all the controversy is some sort of failure to see the wolf as an animal, a splendid predator of no human virtue or vice, rather than as a symbol of either the evil outside of human control or of a vanished innocence.

Allegedly the old Canadian trapper who caught some of the wolves for reintroduction to Yellowstone said of wolves that "the ranchers think they live on cows and the environmentalists think they live on mice. They're both full of shit."

I DO feel that despite the wolves' North American rep for never having harmed anyone (recently refuted by the killing of a geologist in Canada-- I have asked Valerius Geist for details) that sooner or later human- habituated wolves are going to eat someone or, worse, somebody's kid. Big predators DO; it doesn't prove them evil, just to be dangerous animals worthy of respect and caution.

I had an exchange with Matt over this and he suggested I add it here.

"Wolves eat children in India all the time, and have been implicated in attacks on humans in Russia. They ate humans in Europe probably into the 1700's.

"LOTS of lions eat people all over Africa every year, even in parts of South Africa. It is not emphasized by most governments.

"Crocs eat some and hippos kill more but don't eat 'em.

"In Zimbabwe everybody had tales. Lions at the gate after dark scared the crap out of me once (I was in an open car). And not too far from there I got out of the car to pee on a dirt track near Hwange Park we were using for a short cut ( don't know WHY I did in retrospect-- we had already flushed a Cape buffalo and had to wait for a feeding elephant to depart and detour around the tree it had dropped). Mrs. Muza, the gov't aide, didn't want me to get out-- she said a "European" had had a car break down near there not long ago and was walking out when he was eaten.

"Tigers are no longer doing well enough in India to be a threat, though, except in the Sunderbans where all the tigers eat people and there are still rather a lot.

"Siberians seem rather uninclined to prey on folks-- don't know why. The natives call him a "gentleman" there."

Eating Hares

The post below reminded me that I never posted pics of our hare meal a couple ofweeks ago.

Here are four quarters of hound- caught hare, courtesy of John Burchard and his dogs.


Tigger is becoming extremely intelligent-- John tells me she is learning to read.


As you can see, utterly un- shredded by the eevil predators.


We marinated it in good things:


And let it bubble away on the woodstove for hours.

Unfortunately, we were so hungry when it was ready we forgot to take "finished" pics!

Ol' Jim

Prairie Mary and The Alpha E have both sent me this NYT interview with Jim Harrison, structured around (what else?-- but nice to see in the NYT) a quail hunt and a meal, and plenty of organic cigarettes as well.

Jim is an actual working artist and an exemplar of the life well- lived. I have only shared a few letters and some drinks with him, but I hope to share a (game) meal with him before we die.

Tetrapod Zoology

Our favorite zoological blogger, Darren Naish, has moved to a new site at Science Blogs. Go there, bookmark him, and read his first post (on avian vampires). Congratulations, Darren!

Writing Life

Please: read Michael Blowhard's devastating critique of the lit biz in general and the NYTBR specifically. A lot of folks have their knickers in a twist; I think he just NAILS it.

As Others See Us..

Pluvialis-- who has been mysteriously absent from the blogosphere-- sent me an unintentionally hilarious review of the Wilder Places edition of T. H. White's The Goshawk. This was a series of 'forgotten classics" I edited and introduced-- sorry, I can't find any link to that edition.

Anyway, though he attempted to be kind, the reviewer was.. a bit confused, to put it charitably. How he came to think that I was a writer with a different name living in a rural cottage in England on the eve of the Second World War is a bit beyond me but, anyway, here it is:

"hi guys ive just borrowed a copy of the Goshawk by stephen j bodio from
my local library.

"it is more of a story book kind of thing than a factual book so to
speak. it doesnt come close to books such as falconry and hawking or
the harris hawk but it does hold a lot of experience and tips, although
at the beging he does go into a lot of depth about sleep deprevation as
part of a hawks training (which i believe is rather outdated and no
longer used if not rarely)

"cant fault the book as it tells you about the sucseses and mistakes
stephen made and the emotions he goes through and i would recomend it
to a novise as it shows the level of comitment, fear, stress and the
termail your charge can bring aswell as all the endless possitive
sides. and if the first chapter doesnt put you of falconry for life for
your well on your way.

"but i would sugest that its best to read something like falconry and
hawking by philip glasier first as then you will understand the parts
where he is using outdated methods or just being inexperienced and are
less liable to pick up on things that will not benifit you as a
falconer.

"but over all its a good read and when you have some foundation knowlage
or even years of experience then its rather funny to read about how
wrong things go for the Goshawk (which is called Goshawk incidently)
and the falconer."

Words fail me. "the Goshawk (which is called Goshawk incidently)"?? WHAT??

Actually I rather love it. Pluvi says "It's insanely funny, isn't it? I'm so outraged on your behalf." I'm not-- just amazed!

More A. R.

Some exceedingly creepy rhetoric from PETA's own site: their official policy on pets:

"This selfish desire to possess animals and receive love from them causes immeasurable suffering, which results from manipulating their breeding, selling or giving them away casually, and depriving them of the opportunity to engage in their natural behavior. Their lives are restricted to human homes where they must obey commands and can only eat, drink, and even urinate when humans allow them to."

(Snip)

"Even in "good" homes, cats must relieve themselves in dirty litterboxes and often have their digits removed by "declawing," and dogs often have to drink water that has sat around for days, are hurried along on their walks, and are yelled at to get off the furniture or be quiet."

(Snip)

"Contrary to myth, PETA does not want to confiscate animals who are well cared for and "set them free." [No-- they want to kill them for their own good-- see below] What we want is for the population of dogs and cats to be reduced through spaying and neutering and for people to adopt animals (preferably two so that they can keep each other company when their human companions aren't home) from pounds or shelters—never from pet shops or breeders—thereby reducing suffering in the world."

And another, which I have quoted before, on their "No Birth Nation" policy:

"Please, make a pledge right now to take personal responsibility, not just for neutering your own companion animals, but also to neuter or spay every unsterilized animal you encounter. Is there an unneutered cat hanging around the back porch? Does
your neighbor have an unaltered dog chained up in the yard? Is your coworker giving away a litter of kittens? Provide information on spaying and neutering and ask animal guardians when they plan to have the surgery done. Be persistent. If they make excuses, arrange to have the animals altered yourself.

Stay tuned!

A. R. Updates

With any luck, Animal Rights groups may have overplayed their hands.

First,go to the infamous "83 animals in a dumpster" trial, better known perhaps as "PETA Kills Animals".

This link is to day three, when some of the most devastating evidence begins to appear, but go to days one and two also.

Some day three details:

"The most heart-wrenching detail in the prosecution's case so far involves a cat and two kittens Hinkle and Cook allegedly took from the Ahoskie Animal Hospital on the false promise that PETA would find them adoptive homes. Asbell describes the scene:

"On this day, on June 15, [an Ahoskie Animal Hospital employee] called and said that they had a momma cat and two kittens, and they were in good shape. They wanted to adopt them out. When Ms. Hinkle and Mr. Cook went to the shelter on that date, they walked inside, and Ms. Tonya Northcott, one of the employees at the Ahoskie Animal Hospital, came out from the back, and said "You're here for the kittens, the cat and the kittens." … And she said "yes." She went back to the back, got the carrier, got the momma cat, got the two baby kittens, brought them out, and handed them to Ms. Hinkle.

"Ms. Northcott said to her: "These animals -- you're not going to have any -- well, you'll be able to adopt these cats out. We've socialized them, we've played with them, they've had their shots, everything's fine with them." Ms. Hinkle looked at Ms. Northcott and said: "We'll have no problem finding homes for these cats. None at all."

"There was a little girl standing in the front as well. And the little girl had adopted the brother of one of the kittens. And she was looking at the kittens. And Ms. Hinkle looked at her and said: "We'll have no problem placing, we'll have no problem helping these cats" … At that point, Ms. Hinkle and Mr. Cook left, they took the cats, left, went out and got back in the van."

"Those cats ended up in a trash dumpster less than an hour later."

Then there is the "PETA Death Kit":

"Inside the tackle box were several needles, and several bottles of drugs. Some of the bottles still had needles stuck in the top of them. There were syringes in the tackle box that were already pre-loaded with the drugs, inside the syringes. Also in the van, we found manuals from the organization, PETA.

"Roberts later described those "manuals" as "S.O.P. manuals" -- short for PETA's Standard Operating Procedures."

As the reporter said on day two:

".....our nod (so far) for sound-bite-of-the-week goes to PETA lawyer Phil Hirschkop, who told Raleigh's News & Observer on Sunday that Hinkle and Cook "never should have done it, but this is not the crime of the century."

"Let's put Hirschkop's logic to the test:

"1. PETA believes animals and people have equal value.
2. The group regularly compares livestock slaughter to the Nazi Holocaust.
3. Two of its employees allegedly killed 31 animals and tossed their bodies into a dumpster.

"If animals are indeed equal to human beings, but killing and dumping 31 of them isn't the crime of the century, then what is?"

Maybe it is only a crime if you do something USEFUL with animals, like eat them...

More to come...

Ban, Ban, Ban-n-Ban. Ban.

If we asked Reid to paste up all the nutty news from California, he wouldn't be writing much else. Since I'm not writing much else lately myself, I'll wing this one at you.

"Los Angeles and L.A. County authorities are studying whether to bar hydrogenated vegetable oils as an ingredient in restaurant menu items," according to yesterday's LAT story by Tony Barboza.

I can sympathize with Tony's use of the word "bar" for "ban," as writers need a break every now and again from too-often-used terms and phrases. Certainly in our view, "ban" has got shopworn in several zip codes.

The story itself is not much different than ones we've read and groused about from New York and Chicago. But one passage caught my eye. Here, in a moment of brilliant honesty, is the subject laid bare:

"...The change in policy could take the form of a disclosure law or menu labeling,
but 'the best of all possible worlds would be a ban,' said county Supervisor
Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who recommended the study,"

The best of all possible worlds. Imagine! So many worlds, spinning in their slowly disintegrating orbits around so many stars in the sky. So many metaphysical possibilities--alternate universes, subatomic galaxies. And yet the VERY BEST of these will be one in which we've banned for all time the evil of hydrogenated oil.

I shot back to our little email list: "What the hell has happened to people?"

Steve replied, wearily, "...My constant question."

So hereby do we announce the launching of an exploratory committee to determine the efficacy of a nationwide "ban on banning things." We hope to discover if---in fact---a ban on anything has ever ushered in the best of all possible worlds. Is there an historical precedent? What can we learn from it?

Please submit your applications for committee membership in the comments section. Thank you.

Colonial Iron Furnace

Matt sent this piece about an early Colonial iron furnace found near the James River in Virginia that is thought to date to 1619. He asked if I could provide some context for this find.

This venture was an offshoot of the original Jamestown colony, the first successful British colony in North America, that was established in 1607. For nearly a century, the British had been reading about the gold and silver looted from the Americas by the Spanish conquistadores and many of the early Jamestown settlers thought this was their chance. John Smith writes of the problems he had getting these treasure hunters to work building shelter and growing food.

As there was no gold, the colonists had to return to reality and were able to establish a largely agricultural economy, where they could feed themselves and make money by raising and exporting an addictive herb, tobacco. They did have some industrial endeavors, though. A glassworks was established at Jamestown. Near the National Park Service’s reconstruction of the original James fort, they also have built a glassworks, and tourists can see workers in period costume blowing glass bottles.

The colonists also soon saw that there was iron ore nearby, largely deposited in wetlands in nodules known as bog iron. They used this bog iron from the earliest years of the colony and the recently discovered furnace was apparently one built to take advantage of terrestrial deposits found further from the fort. The colony was soon shipping ingots of pig iron back to England.

As the story says, this iron smelting operation was destroyed during a revolt by the Powhatan Indians in 1622. About 300 of the 1,400 colonists were killed in the revolt, led by the chief Opechancanough, whose improbable life story I discussed in a post last spring.

The most important recent development in studies of the Jamestown colony was the discovery of the original fort location by archaeologist Bill Kelso in the mid-1990s. It was long thought to have eroded off into the James River. Kelso has a new book out about his findings. This has been issued just in time for the celebration by the state of Virginia of the 400th anniversary of the founding of the colony.

What Reid is Reading

We haven't done this in a while!

The Reindeer People by Piers Vitebsky. Account by an anthropologist of his life and times spent with the Eveny, a reindeer herding native people in Siberia. On Steve's recommendation.

Purity of Blood by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Historical novel set in 1620s Spain and sequel to his earlier "Captain Alatriste." An enjoyably literate swashbuckler with a rare Spanish perspective. The title comes from, and the plot turns on the fact that in Hapsburg Spain, anyone of prominence had to prove pure Christian ancestry with no Moorish or Jewish intermarriage - something tough to do in a country largely run by the Moors for several hundred years.

Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon by Donald Hagerty. Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) was a talented but under-recognized artist of the American West. If you are like me, you'll leaf through the plates in this book and recognize lots of paintings and drawings that you never connected to this artist. Something I learned from this book: Dixon was good friends with artist Gottardo Piazzoni, grandfather of, and inspiration to artist and Bodio friend, Russell Chatham. Chatham's portrait of Betsy Huntington is on the cover of "Querencia."

Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland by Bryan Sykes. Interesting story of a genetic survey of the British Isles.

UPDATE

In response to Jerry Blake's comment I have loaded a scanned image of Maynard Dixon's "Cloud World."

The Laki Eruption

The BBC has an interesting story about a forgotten natural disaster in Great Britain. In 1783, the Laki volcano in Iceland erupted, and belched clouds of toxic gas (mostly sulphur dioxide) that blew over Britain and much of Western Europe. The clouds must have lasted for weeks, and researchers in the UK have recently estimated (based on parish burial records) that 23,000 people died from it there alone.

This death toll makes it the largest natural disaster in modern British history, yet it seems to have almost completely fallen out of the national history. A third of the population of Iceland was killed in this eruption, so it has left its mark on their national memory. The British treatment of the Laki eruption reminds me of the similar fall of the New Madrid Earthquake down the memory hole in this country.

The worst part of this story is that it will repeat. Iceland is volcanically very active and it's only a matter of time before another eruption sets a "killer cloud" loose again.

Fake Heads

In the "TRENDS" section of the LA times, Reid found this piece of possible Q.-reader interest: "Wild, styled and gleefully cruelty-free."

Staff writer David Keeps uses that description to categorize the artificial animal trophies he claims are "becoming fashionable wall decor, especially for urban hipsters." Keeps interviews a number of retailers who speculate as to the motives of those who go faux, ranging from inexpensive affectation to a grander lifestyle to " politically correct consumerism." There is a hint of post-modernism here also: "Hanging a likeness of a dead animal made from an inorganic material, [one retailer] says, 'adds an obvious element of irony when the medium and the message are so fundamentally opposed.'"

Obvious to some, maybe. But the concept is not necessarily post-modern, and it's certainly not new. Manufactured images of animals have always been a part of human householdss. That animal shapes are pleasingly sculptural and well-suited to stylized renderings was clear to the cave dwellers of Lascaux, circa 15,000 B.C. (the French were always fashionable). Taxidermy and mounted trophies, by contrast, must have a much shorter history. I wonder: Were mounted heads considered ironic when they first became available?

My point is only to steal a little thunder from anyone who might think a faux animal head is a fresh or pithy political statement. Folks to whom this sentiment might make sense:

"I suspect that anybody that buys these has no desire to hunt a deer," says
product designer Aaron Silverstein. "They are elegant and slightly stylized,
enough removed from reality that they don't freak anyone out."

Is that the mantra of our age, or what?

Still...some of these are pretty neat!

Metal Detectors

The BBC reports that archaeological finds are up 45% in the last year in the UK due to increased activity by metal detector enthusiasts. It is interesting to see that there is a large national organization there for these amateur researchers and a large on-line database for recording their finds. Follow the link for the "National Council for Metal Detecting" on the right side of the page for a view of this database.

Amateurs will always be interested in archaeology and it is good to see these sorts of schemes for harnessing their activities for research. Here in the US historical archaeologists often use metal detectors but they are of little use for us prehistorians, as the Indians here had very little metal.

Traveling with Animals

Reid sent a rather silly NYT piece (seems to be behind their damned firewall now) about people who travel with animals, mostly professionally or because they can afford to. I must admit there are times when we do, at least if we know there are good places to stay. Here is a photo of Lib at the late lamented Ghost Ranch in Tucson a few years ago (it was then owned by a falconer).



(Click on the photo to enlarge it).

Gun Humor

This comparison, re Chas, of the AK, the AR 15, and the Mosin Nagant, is utterly irresistible for those who like such things.

There are MANY comparisons but how about this one on ammo?

If you have an AK "You buy cheap ammo by the case." If you have an AR Clone "You lovingly reload precision crafted rounds one by one." If you have a Mosin "You dig your ammo out of a farmer's field in Ukraine and it works just fine."

OK, one more: cleaning:
AK "It works though you have never cleaned it. Ever." AR? "You have $9 per ounce special non-detergent synthetic teflon infused oil for cleaning." Mosin? "It was last cleaned in Berlin in 1945."

One More on AR

This one needs highlighting re the new proposed NM regs. From the mouth of PETA:

"Each and every one of us can make a difference. Please, make a pledge right
now to take personal responsibility, not just for neutering your own
companion animals, but also to neuter or spay every unsterilized animal you
encounter. Is there an unneutered cat hanging around the back porch? Does
your neighbor have an unaltered dog chained up in the yard? Is your coworker
giving away a litter of kittens? Provide information on spaying and
neutering and ask animal guardians when they plan to have the surgery done.
Be persistent. If they make excuses, arrange to have the animals altered
yourself."

Please, please, try that in rural New Mexico. Should I shoot you or sue you first?

The Latest

Apologies to all who care-- we are still struggling through the detrius of 2006 and preparing for what promises to be a serious Animal Rights battle in New Mexico. We spent the holidays just getting over being sick and are still dealing with things like an unexpectedly returned sick hawk,a re- mortgaged house, and other difficulties-- dreary. This too will pass. On the good side, we are having the first good snows in a decade. Not only does this bode well for wildlife and our rancher friends alike; we can't help feeling a bit of schadtenfreude (did I spell that right?) as the "nuevos" who have been here through four years of drought wail that it isn't supposed to snow in New Mexico. Yes it is.

AR: presidentially- ambitious governor Bill Richardson plans a budget of 3.6 million dollars for animal "welfare" this year. As always the devil will be in the details. It did not bode well that there are PETA and HSUS members on his advisory board. Yesterday the gloves came off: Albuquerque mayor Martin Chavez, backer of Albuqueque's "HEART" mandatory spay- neuter program, has announced they are seeking to make spay neuter regs mandatory statewide-- a national first I believe. Watch this space.

Elsewhere on the subject: Patrick reports that several rational members of the anti- hunt League against Cruel Sports in England have changed their minds about foxhunting:

"...James Barrington, former Executive Director of the so-called "League Against Cruel Sports" in the U.K. [is] saying that the Hunting Act is a sham and needs to be repealed and replaced with a common-sense law that regulates hunting a bit, but which otherwise keeps it entirely legal.

"Barrington is just one of four former high-placed LACS officials (including another former Executive Director and Chairman of LACS), who say LACS is on the entirely wrong path."

RTWT of course.

We could be in even worse shape (?) than under an AR regime-- we could be dog owners living under the rule of mullahs. A member of our tazi list writes of a friend near Tehran, in one of the traditional lands of the tazi- saluki: "If she goes there or elsewhere to exercise her dogs she still has a problem to go by car, because her property is surrounded by buildings.... And I'm informed it's forbidden to take a dog into a car. A person caught with a dog in his car can be put in jail for one year as I was told."

On the other side, a new group named H.E.L.P.--Hunters and Ecologists for a Living Planet-- has formed to protect the rights of all good hunters from English foxhunters to Bushmen. They sound genuine, innovative, and interesting-- a group to watch.

UPDATE FROM REID

The LA Times reports the formation of another hunter advocacy group, the Union Sportsman's Alliance. From the article:

"An advocacy group that will join outdoors enthusiasts with labor union members to work on environmental issues is designed to bring new faces — and new muscle — to conservation efforts.

The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which represents hunting and fishing groups across the country, announced the formation this week of the Union Sportsmen's Alliance in partnership with 20 unions that have a membership of nearly 5 million.

The group will work to increase federal funding for wildlife protection while ensuring access for hunters and fishermen."

snip

"An outside survey of the 20 unions involved showed that while 70% of their members hunt or fish, only 29% of that group belonged to any kind of sportsmen's organization."

Good news. And a good example of innovative thinking - putting together an advocacy group from organizations that you wouldn't intuitively think had much in common.

Archaeology Fatigue

This piece reports that many residents of Easter Island are getting fed up with the disruption of archaeologists working on their island. They resent the resources that are being devoted to restoring the moai, the iconic prehistoric statues that Easter Island is known for, and land set aside to preserve prehistoric sites. As the article says:

"Part of the debate may simply stem from sheer fatigue with archaeology and archaeologists. Ever since an expedition led by Thor Heyerdahl landed here 50 years ago, Easter Island has been a magnet not just for archaeologists, but also anthropologists, ethnographers, musicologists, botanists, biologists and art historians.

“As Rapanui we are tired of people coming here, investigating us and then going away with a ‘Ciao!’ and not giving anything back,” Mr. Arévalo Pakarati said. “What did Heyerdahl really leave behind for us?"

I guess I can sympathize. The locals need to have a stake in what is going on.

Where the Buffalo Roam

Well the gist of this NY Times piece is that they've been roaming around so much that they have interbred with cattle. The Times says that there are estimates that of the 300,000 bison in the US, only about 10,000 are genetically "pure" - don't carry genes from cattle. The Times makes this out to be a big problem calling for controlled breeding and the segregation of "pure' herds.

I was not aware of the issue, and when I passed this on to Steve his take was that it wasn't that big a deal:

"I knew of it. While keeping 'pure" herds pure is fine, I doubt it is as big a problem as is posed here. If they can eventually get them on the prairie with predators etc the "right' genes will sort themselves out, just as in the reintroduced eastern peregrine."

I was also interested to see that physical anthropologist John Hawks, a guy who knows lots more about genetics than I do, had weighed in on the matter and reached much the same conclusion as Steve:

"The whole idea of "genetic contamination" implies that there is something bad about this genetic introgression. But we can guess that the cattle genes don't intrinsically reduce fitness, since bison with cattle genes have been greatly increasing in numbers. And these introgressed herds are unlikely to be fixed for any cattle genes, so the original bison alleles still have every chance to compete with the cattle alleles. In other words, the cattle introgression has introduced variation into bison, some of which might be adaptive.

As you can tell, I'm not very sympathetic to the idea that we should prevent "genomic extinction" by insisting on some kind of genetic purity. It seems to me that we want to retain as much variation in our conserved populations as possible, so that they can adapt to changing climatic conditions in the future. We can't predict which alleles will be adaptive."

snip

"This seems like a good doctoral project for somebody: how do the introgressed bison compare behaviorally with "genetically pure" bison? And the all-important question: how does mean fertility compare between these herds? They've both historically grown very rapidly, but does one maintain higher mean fitness than the other? Are there more animals in the Custer herd that fail to reproduce?"

Interesting stuff. RTWT

More on Neanderthal - Modern Human Interbreeding

You may recall a post I put up in October that discussed a 30,000 year old cranium recovered from a cave in Romania that was purported to have both modern human and Neanderthal features. Now the same researcher, Erik Trinkhaus, has a second cranium from a different Romanian cave that he believes shows the same thing. This one is older, dating to 35 - 40,000 years ago.

As I said in the earlier post, and as is pointed out in this new piece, the current project that is mapping the Neanderthal genome will likely tell us much more about the interbreeding issue than will comparative cranial morphology.

Out of Africa

The NY Times has a piece on a fossil human cranium found in South Africa that seems to confirm DNA evidence about the initial spread of modern humans out of Africa into Eurasia and later Europe. Roughly 50,000 years ago, DNA evidence (a good run-down of this is in Before the Dawn) indicates that a small group of modern humans (perhaps as few as 150 individuals) crossed the Red Sea and migrated through the Arabian peninsula to eventually populate the rest of the world.

We know what these people looked like from remains found in Eurasia and Europe, but up until this find there has been a problem. From the article:

"Until now, however, paleontologists had been frustrated by the absence of fossils to test the hypothesis of most geneticists that the people of sub-Saharan Africa and in Eurasia at that time were one and the same — modern humans. The human fossil record in Africa from 70,000 to 15,000 years ago had been virtually blank."

Some scientists, on the other hand, have contended that the migration could have begun as early as 100,000 years ago and that in the intervening time, contact with more archaic populations like the Neanderthals could have produced recognizable changes in what became the modern humans of Eurasia."

This find shows that people living in sub-Saharan Africa looked much the same as those in Eurasia, bolstering the DNA evidence for a single late migration.

Doggie Downers

If this makes the Doom and Gloom column, then at least it suggests a way to feel better.

Reid found this LAT piece entitled "Fido's Little Helper," a reference to the growing trend in giving psychoactive medications to pets. Laugh, but we do buy them sweaters. And last week I saw a commercial for a gourmet cat food with parsley in it. Parsely!

So, Prozac and parsley. I don't want to know what's next.

But I'm posting on this to admit that my wife and I actually gave a dose of Prozac (under veterinary supervision) to our late kitty, Tiny Shorts. It wasn't just her name that made her crazy; she was ticky right from the start. We found Tiny abandoned in an office air conditioning vent at about ten days of age. We raised her and enjoyed her peculiar ways until last year, when she died of kidney failure.

On most days, Tiny Shorts was an ordinary cat. But about three times a year, she would flip out and spend several days buried under the covers of the guest bed, refusing to eat or even move. This was alarming, and especially distressing to my wife. But it didn't stop me from dropping the word "catatonic" into the conversation at least once a day.

As one such episode stretched nearly into a week, we knew we needed to do something. We had guests coming for the weekend. Our vet suggested this medication, which we used and which seemed to do the trick. She may have come out of it on her own; we don't know.

Knowing Patrick would have something interesting to say about all this, Reid cc'd him. Patrick writes:

"My best friend in college was a huge muscular Chippewa Indian fellow (a very gentle soul) who was a psych major and he made cats schizophrenic by randomly shocking them when they went for the food bowl. The experiment, as I recall, had to do with mental illness, consistency, and rewards. I just remember thinking it was wrong, and being surprised that animals could be made nuts so quickly by such a relatively small stress.

"When I first got Jack Russell terriers, and laser light pointers came out, I was told to never play a laser light on the floor as the Russells would chase it -- they are very prone Compulsive Disorder. Sure enough, a few years ago I was at a friend's house and he had two Russells that chased shadows and imaginary shapes on the carpet. Yow!

"Right now, almost all of the drug companies that make anti-schizophrenia medications are under investigation for illegal off-label marketing of their drugs to dementia patients. The drug do not help dementia, but an alzheimer patient is not likely to complain, and Medicare and Medicaid will foot the bill. About a billion dollars (at least) in False Claims Act settlements are stacked up behind these frauds, which stand as proof that the drug companies will sell anything to anyone (even a dog) if they can make a buck. That said, see points one and two above -- some animals really ARE nuts, and really do need meds. This statement may or may not refer to people in my immediate family. :)"

Adrift

When I took my first historical geology course at Tulane, back in the day, we of course studied plate techtonics and continental drift. It was a revelation to me to adjust my time sense and think about large land masses gliding along our planet's surface, splitting up or colliding. I pored over maps that geologists had reconstructed of the Paleozoic continents and features that they christened with names like Pangea, Laurasia, Gondwanaland, and the Tethys Sea. I always liked the sound of Tethys Sea. Later I was glad to be in on the joke when I saw the gag bumpersticker "Reunite Gondwanaland!"

The New York Times (their Science section is on a roll!) has a very good piece on geologists who are predicting the direction of continental drift over the next 200-300 million years. Their conclusion is that the continents will slam back together into another big supercontinent that they call Pangea Ultima.

I've pasted in their projections for western North America above. They believe that 250 million years from now, due to slippage along the San Andreas Fault, the site of the city of Los Angeles will have moved north past San Francisco to about the latitude of Alaska. I wonder what that will do to rush hour traffic on the 405?

Lots of interesting stuff. RTWT!

Skin

The New York Times has an interesting interview with anthropologist Nina Jablonski of Penn State. Jablonski discusses her recent book on that understudied but largest human organ - the skin. I was particularly struck by her observation that "humans are the self-decorating ape." Even those of us who haven't had ink done rely on some combination of shaving, hair trimming, jewelry and make-up to send social signals.

Killer Hounds

For those that appreciate such things; granddogs Pearl the lurcher and six- month old Maty, the tazi, with Maty's first hare.



It WILL be eaten. By humans.

Nuclear Tourism

Reid sent this piece from the NYT on "nuclear tourism", where the tourist visits such things as the Trinity site and a missile silo in Arizona.

On some bizarre principle of confronting one's nightmares such things have always appealed to me. I have been to Trinity site, twice..

I also used to see the little fenced plots with silos in them-- "rocket ranches"-- when I hunted on the Montana plains. You did NOT touch the fences.

At Trinity, I once saw a bunch of peace demonstrators with a statue of Shiva-- referencing perhaps Oppenheimers' statement quoting him: "I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds".

A ranch woman walked by with her little kids and said: "See, that's what radiation does-- gives you extra arms and legs".

UPDATE FROM REID
Steve and I had an e-mail exchange on "rocket ranches" in parallel with Steve putting up this post, that he suggested I paste in here.

Reid:

I have some archaeology friends who stumbled into the fence around a silo while conducting a survey in Missouri back in the early 80s and got picked up by the Air Police. Took them half a day to explain their way out of trouble.

Steve:

Happened fairly often in Montana with out- of- state hunters I think!

Reid:

In 1978 I was driving on a rural road in western Nebraska (just north of Sidney) on my way to do an archaeology survey. I saw flashing police lights in my rear view mirror and pulled to the side of the road. It was a convoy of Air Force vehicles: two jeeps full of armed Air Police preceded a large semi-truck and trailer which was followed by two more jeeps full of Air Police. A Huey Cobra helicopter gunship was escorting overhead.

One of the Air Police jeeps pulled over behind me and the APs got out and surrounded my car, M-16s held at port arms. I was tempted to say good morning, but was being glared at so hard, I kept my mouth shut. Obviously moving warheads in the semi-trailer. After the convoy passed they jumped back in the jeep and drove off.

When I worked at GE, there was a retired Air Force Colonel who worked for me who had spent 10 years as a silo commander in the Strategic Air Command (SAC). Most of that time he was at Malmstrom AFB in Montana. He had interesting factoids to tell about how command capsules had control over multiple silos and that control over fields of silos overlapped among multiple capsules so that if one was taken out another could launch its missles. When telling these stories he would invariably say, "Yes sir! I am a SAC-trained killer!"

Just occurred to me Steve, that you really aren't very far at all from Trinity Site are you? Any old-timers in Magdalena talk about hearing/seeing the blast?

Steve:

Not far at all, and many remember-- even folks in their sixties. You could see the glow.

Giant Cryptozoological Flying Squirrels

You should always read Darren, but I have always had a soft spot for Asia's giant flying squirrels, and hope to see one one day.

Good stuff

I have been wanting to do a long discussion about the excellent and idiosyncratic Oklahoma- and Poland based anthropological blogger Stephen Browne, who posts at Rants and Raves. I do not have time to do him justice right now, but I encourage you to read him. For a sampler of his innovative thinking, try this post on writer- invented religions, starting with Kipling's haunting "Hymn to Mithras" (we know Mithraism existed but almost nothing about it) and passing on to the late science fiction writer Poul Anderson's imagining of the religion of a race of intelligent carnivorous birds.

"So what kind of religion would a race of flying hunters create? Their god is a hunter - and we, all living beings, are his prey. We exist to give honor to god. God loves us, the way a hunter would love the prey in his sights. Our obligation is to fight as hard as we can to live as long as we can, so that god has honor from us.

"Sound chilling? Yet Anderson wrote a very moving eulogy for this religion, "High you flew on many winds, until at last God stooped on you in your pride. Long you fought Him and well, and from you He has honor. Go now. Be wind, be ash, be water. Be always remembered." "

(Incidentally, Poul Anderson was one of the three or four most intelligent and informed humans I have ever known-- and the "competition" is the likes of Philip Morrison and Jonathan Kingdon).

And while we are on religion, here is a cheerful rebuke of poor Richard Dawkins by a member of (I would guess) the Church of England who is perfectly comfortable with evolution. More and more I think that Dawkins simply has little sense of what religion is or at least can be for some sophisticated minds.

Oddly, another review contra his "God Delusion" in the New York Review of Books (not online AFAIK) contained a line about his Selfish Gene being the best piece of popular science writing of the Twentieth Century. I am revisiting it, and I might just give it that award-- of the second half at least.

Eating Hares

An anonymous commentor on my post California Coursing Redux takes issue with my defence of coursing. Very well, though I don't think he or she read it as carefully as they might have. But with one point I must take issue.

"As for the comment given at the hearing that the killed rabbits were all consumed by owners of the dogs. I didn't believe it. "Please put a piece of one of the torn apart rabbits on my plate. Wait till I pull the fur off. Thank you"."

Unfortunately, NOT all hunters with longdogs in this country eat their hares, though all hares are eaten-- by the dogs. But this is not because they are ripped apart, because they NEVER are. I have eaten from between ten and twenty hares in the last year, from my dogs and (mostly) from friends, because we have been in a low hare population swing the past year. If there was any damage it tended to be on the ribs (not eaten by humans, only used for stock) or on the head (by stooping falcon-- a bullet- swift death). Sighthounds drop their quarry when it stops running, and are utterly un- possessive.

Hares aren't eaten in the US because (A) nobody realizes that jackrabbits are hares and (B) nobody but a classical French or English cook does slow braises-- they take time.

For a good hare recipe (if I say so myself!) go here. (And check out the rest of that fine food- filled blog too).

Later this week I am cooking our last hare of the season (unless we get a late run-- we try to stop in February), courtesy of Dr. John Burchard's salukis in California. I will photograph and post.

Decline, Fall-- and a Little Rise?

I have done many "is there still an England?" posts, and this article: "Mince Pie Danger to be Assessed" is surely in the decline category.

"Organisers of a village Christmas party have been told they must carry out a risk assessment of their mince pies - or their festivities will be cancelled.

"Council bosses say posters will have to be displayed at the party in Embsay, in the Yorkshire Dales, warning villagers the pies contain nuts and suet pastry.

"The cocoa content and temperature of the hot chocolate must also be checked."

(Snip)

""The council gave me a huge list of things we had to do. I wrote back, a little bit tongue in cheek, asking if I really had to risk assess free mince pies and a brass band, and they said yes.

"Everything we do, from putting tinsel up to providing refreshments has to be assessed. We have to consider the dangers involved, that someone might choke on their mince pie or have a nut allergy.

"I also understand that Santa may need a Criminal Records Bureau check.

"For a small Dales village we found it a bit of a joke really." "

(Snip)

"Craven Council's director of community services, Jonathan Kerr, said: "We support these community events and we try to help local communities organise them and make sure they are as safe as possible."

CRAVEN COUNCIL?? Indeed!

On the other hand: since the ban, there are more foxhunters than ever!

"Record numbers of hunt supporters gathered at Boxing Day events across the country in defiance of Labour's ban on hunting with hounds.

"Organisers claimed that hunting was more popular than ever and that more than 300,000 braved the cold to enjoy their favourite pastime.

"The Countryside Alliance said that the record turnout proved the two-year ban on the blood sport was irrelevant and called for the law to be changed.

(Snip)

"....the enthusiastic turn-out suggested the opposite - with more than half of all hunts reporting an increase in membership in the past two years."

"Il est haut!"*, as Betsy would have said.

(*Tally Ho!)

Links and Excuses

..in rather the reverse order.

Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico has announced a 3.6 million dollar "Animal Welfare" plan that reeks of Animal Rights and the notorious Albuquerque "HEART" plan-- see earlier posts here. The biggest single fear-- and there are many-- is that they will try to stealthily implement a statewide spay- neuter law, as they ALREADY TRIED TO DO IN 2004. Only Ron Gustafson's actions stopped them that time, and now they have the governor's support. We at Q have been meeting with friendly political faces and organizing via internet. I will keep everyone informed. We don't need a situation like that in Lousville, where a draconian ordinance has banned several breeds, allowed only one unaltered dog to a hosehold, and forced dog shows to cancel in that city. Stay tuned.

This all has made for light posting, but I will have a few below, both happy and irritable.

Oh-- and re AR-- take a look at this slap in PETA's face! Sure, they love animals-- starved cows and euthanized dogs. HT SAOVA.

Bigfoot: Exposed

In the "What I Read Over Christmas Holiday" column, I give you Bigfoot Exposed (subtitled, An Anthropologist Examines America's Enduring Legend). My copy of this 2004 publication by University of Florida professor David J. Daegling* was a gift from the author, who happens to be married to my wife's first cousin. Thanks again, Dave!

With the disclosure of familial association on the table, I'd like to recommend this book to anyone---skeptic or advocate---with an interest in the never-boring topic of Bigfoot. Darren's foray into Bigoot research is especially appreciated in light of Daegling's work, which among other things, addresses a longtime complaint among Bigfoot hunters that accredited scientists are unwilling to examine their evidence. Clearly Daegling and Naish and (I had no idea) a number of other credentialed researchers have indeed been willing to step into this particular and peculiar forest.

What my cousin finds there may surprise you; his book will almost certainly educate and entertain you, as it did me. I won't reveal his conclusions, but will say that Daegling manages to dispel at least one enduring myth: that a Ph.D. can't write a page turner.

*See Archaeology (online) for brief interview with Daegling.