As many regular readers will know, I hunt with coursing dogs– in my case, Asian tazis from Kazakhstan. Being a primitive who lives deep in the boonies, not to mention an enthusiastic carnivore, I am a hunter plain and simple. We go out, we chase, we sometimes catch, we eat (a hare recipe was recently …
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California Wildfire: ABC News “Discovers” Coursing
In defense of all good things old-fashioned, we present this recent story by ABC News: a pitifully slanted piece of writing that “exposes” open field coursing (in this case, rabbit hunting with sighthounds) in California and—tiresomely, predictably, maddeningly—its presumed “cruelty” to animals. At least one state legislator, having seen video of rabbits killed by sighthounds, …
The Wonderful World of Leeches
“Lost worlds” right beside us– Carl Zimmer on leech scientist Mark Siddall. A sample: “…. scientists need to find leeches with big bacteria-housing organs to dissect. It turns out that some of the biggest are in a species that lives just on the rear end of the hippopotamus. So Dr. Siddall has traveled to South …
Lost World!
Reid, Walter Hingley, and others have been sending me news of the wonderful “Lost World” found by ornithologist Bruce Beehler and his colleagues in New Guinea– go here and here and here for reports. Matt says: ” “He [ Beehler ] added, ‘The fact that scientists can still findnew species means there are still wild …
..and some fascinating additions to the post below
…by Jeff Lockwood: ” In particular there were three intriguing elements that you draw out from the various sources (including mine, for which I am deeply appreciative). “First, we worry about fossil fuels when, at least in principle, these natural resources are fungible (we could conceivably shift to wind, solar, nuclear or whatever). On the …
Prairie Mary Guest Post
My reading has been giving me some sharp jolts and new thoughts lately. One came from a random remark on 2blowhards.com that at the time the United States were uniting and declaring independence, the people of India — then under British rule — were dying by the millions because of famine brought on by mismanagement. …
Airman in the Glacier Identified
Last fall I posted a couple of times on the body of a WWII era airman that was found preserved in a glacier in the central Sierra Nevadas. Today the LA Times reports that the Department of Defense’s forensics lab in Hawaii has identified it as Leo Mustonen of Brainerd, Minnesota. Mustonen was 22 when …
Rebecca Webb Carranza, RIP
Ms. Webb died in a hospice in Phoenix on January 19 at age 98. We are all in her debt, as her El Zarape Tortilla Factory pioneered the commercial manufacture and sale of tortilla chips.
New Orleans Musicians
One easy way to know if you’ve found a place with culture—an un-manufactured place, breathing on its own—is to listen for its music. There has been a lot of music played in New Orleans, some of it entirely the product of the place and found in its true form nowhere else. The rauccus neighborhood brass …
More on the Donner Party
Some of you will remember a post I put up last month on the Donner Party and Alferd Packer, that was occasioned by a report that excavations at one of the Donner Party camps had provided no evidence of cannibalism. Well, yesterday the LA Times had an op-ed by Ethan Rarick entitled “Cannibals with Courage” …