I have written here before about NAIS (National Animal Identification System), the insidious plan by the federal bureaucracy and “Big Ag” to microchip every farm (and probably every domestic) animal in the country. It seems to still be rolling on, virtually unopposed, except by some small breeders, organic farmers etc., but virtually everyone who checks …
Something You Won’t Be Able to Do in New Jersey…
Course roe deer with borzois. Courtesy of Yvonne McGehee and her Russian trip. The McGehees raise REAL working borzois in Idaho.
Another Threat
Anne Pearse Hocker just sent a news item from New Jersey– it seems that illiterate lawmakers may inadvertently (I hope?!) ban falconry and hunting with dogs in their efforts to do away with “cruelty”: ” “This bill would clarify that cruelty to animals … includes the use of an animal to injure or kill another …
Bat Falcon
Querencia reader and frequent commentor Annie D has just been to Costa Rica, where she photographed many amazing birds, insects, and plants. One of my favorite sequences (other than some beetles I hope to get later for Pluvialis) was this group. The toucan was one of a group trying to steal eggs from a Bat …
The Mechanical Contrivium
Pluvialis at Fretmarks and Chas at Nature Blog led me to this surreal site. Here are Querencia’s results: 1.You should always store Querencia in an airtight container in the fridge.2. Humans share over 98 percent of their DNA with Querencia.3. Scientists believe that Querencia began billions of years ago as an enormous ball of dust …
Sad and Infuriating
Last week, Matt’s 82- year- old grandmother was attacked and brutalized by two young thugs. ” Two men followed her home from the shopping mall, a distance of a few miles over quiet residential streets. One man remained in an idling silver sedan while the other attacked, wielding a chunk of broken concrete that officers …
Russia Post # 2: “Hazing”
Hazing is always nasty, and Russian military hazing has perhaps always been bad. But this…. (also an expired- link Moscow Times story): “The Defense Ministry said Thursday that it would close the Chelyabinsk Armor Academy, where a brutal New Year’s Eve hazing resulted in a conscript having his legs and genitals amputated.” (Snip– no, let’s …
Russia Post # 1
The former soldier turned defense writer and novelist, Ralph Peters, once mentioned that Russia would always break your heart. This may be in part because there is so much potential there, and there are so many obstacles to reaching it. For an instance of the first: despite past horrors and the existence of places like …
More Links
From Tech Central Station: is your mind stuck in 1968? I try to be open to ideas, whether they come from left or right– have linked to TCS, Orion, 2Blowhards, Sailer, Derbyshire, the NY andLA Times(es), and more. But I often find conservatives (of a certain kind anyway) and libertarians more open to heretical ideas …
A Winter Braise
(First Published in Three Martini Lunch). Sometimes a phrase will inspire you. I was reading a really bad issue of Esquire, including incompetent food writing (apparently their restaurant critic thinks that gizzards are “chicken assholes” and that kidneys are inedible) when I came upon a simple recipe for braised lamb shanks. The phrase was “use …