When a Dog is Cold...

...it just takes care of the problem!  Via my lovely bride:

An Email from Queen Elizabeth...

Via reader Simi L.:

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

In light of your immediate failure to financially manage yourselves and also in recent years your tendency to elect incompetent Presidents of the USA and therefore not able to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, David Cameron, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated sometime next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour,' 'favour,' 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise.' Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').
   
   
2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ''like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u'' and the elimination of '-ize.'
   
   
3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
   
   
4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you're not ready to shoot grouse.
   
   
5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
   
   
6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
   
   
7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.
   
   
8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.
   
   
9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. New Zealand beer is also acceptable, as New Zealand is pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
   
   
10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.
    
    
11. You will cease playing American football. There are only two kinds of proper football; one you call soccer, and rugby (dominated by the New Zealanders). Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).
    
    
12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the Australians (World dominators) first to take the sting out of their deliveries.
    
    
13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.
    
    
14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).
    
    
15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.
    
    

God Save the Queen!

How Much Would You Give?

Via my mom:

A driver is stuck in a traffic jam on the highway. Nothing is moving.
Suddenly, a man knocks on the window. The driver rolls down the window and asks, "What's going on?"

"Terrorists have kidnapped Congress, and are asking for a $10 million dollar ransom. Otherwise, they are going to douse them all in gasoline and set them on fire. We are going from car to car, taking up a collection."

"How much is everyone giving, on average?" the driver asks.

The man replies, "About a gallon."

Ha!

I'd gladly pay for a tanker to drive to D.C...

The citizens are not happy with their elected representatives.  I wonder if the citizens will actually remember this, come November 2012?

Minnesota...

Via my mom:

Minnesota became the 32nd state on May 11, 1858 and was originally settled by a lost tribes of Swedes seeking refuge from the searing heat of Wisconsin 's winters.

Minnesota gets it's name from the Sioux Indian word "mah-nee-soo-tah," meaning, "No, really...!!!! They eat fish soaked in lye."

The state song of Minnesota is "Someday the Vikings will... Aw, never mind."

The Mall of America in Bloomington , Minnesota covers 9.5 million square feet and has enough space to hold 185,000 idiot teenagers yapping away on cell phones.

Madison, Minnesota is known as "the lutefisk capital of the world." Avoid this city at all costs.

"The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was set in Minneapolis , Minnesota , and was Mary's first real acting job since leaving the "Dick van Dyke Show. The show about a single woman's struggle to find happiness in the big city was originally titled "Life Without Dick," but that was changed for some reason.

Downtown Minneapolis has an enclosed skyway system covering 52 blocks, allowing people to live, work, eat, and sleep without ever going outside. The only downside to this is that a Swede occasionally turns up missing.

Cartoonist Charles M. Shultz was born in Minneapolis , Minnesota and grew up in St. Paul. He was the only artist to accurately depict the perfectly circular heads of Minnesota natives.

The Hormel Company of Austin , Minnesota produces 6 million cans of Spam a year, even though no one actually eats it. Spam is a prized food in Japan & Hawaii--Spam sushi!!

Minnesota license plates are blue & white and contain the phrase "Blizzards on the 4th of July - you get used to it."

Frank C. Mars, founder of the Mars Candy Co. was born in Newport, Minnesota . His 3 Musketeers candy bar originally contained three bars in one wrapper, each filled with a different flavor of nougat -chocolate, Spam and lutefisk.

Tonka trucks continue to be manufactured in Minnetonka, Minnesota, despite the thousands of GI Joe dolls killed by them annually in rollover accidents. No airbags, no seat belts. These things are deathtraps, I tell ya!

Author Laura Ingalls Wilder was raised at Walnut Grove, Minnesota, and was famous for writing the "Little House" series of books, as well as inventing the "Spam diet" which consists of looking at a plate of Spam until you lose your appetite. Much like the "lutefisk diet"

The snowmobile was invented in Roseau , Minnesota so as to allow families a means of attending 4th of July picnics.

Minnesotans are almost indistinguishable from Wisconsinites. The only way to tell them apart is to ask if they voted for Mondale in '84.

Now... it's up to you to forward this to all your friends If one of them does not forward it to others, he/she will be given an entrance pin to attend the Eelpout Festival in Walker, MN....in February --

Cold is a relative thing ya know....

At 65 degrees, Arizonans turn on the heat. People in Minnesota plant gardens.

At 60, Californians shiver uncontrollably. People in Minnesota sunbathe.

At 50, Italian & English cars won't start. People in Minnesota drive with the windows down..

At 40, Georgians don coats, thermal underwear, gloves, wool hats. People in Minnesota throw on a flannel shirt.

At 35, New York landlords finally turn up the heat. People in Minnesota have the last cookout before it gets cold.

At 20, People in Miami all die. Minnesotans close their windows.

At 0, Californians fly away to Mexico . People in Minnesota get out their winter coats.

At 10 below zero, Hollywood disintegrates. The Girl Scouts in Minnesota are selling cookies door to door.

At 20 below, Washington DC runs out of hot air. (Ya think? Nah.). People in Minnesota let their dogs sleep indoors.

At 30 below, Santa Claus abandons the North Pole. Minnesotans get upset because they can't start the snowmobile.

At 40 below, ALL atomic motion stops. People in Minnesota start saying..."Cold enough for ya, eh?"

At 50 below, hell freezes over. Minnesota public schools will open 2 hours late.

25 Years Ago...

Via reader Simon M:

Hah!

A New Color...

I've posted before about the strange phenomenon of visible ultraviolet light.  This was discovered in WWII when cataract patients serving off the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe reported that they could see the glow of German night troops using ultraviolet lights.  The German troops were equipped with an early form of night vision equipment that the Allies couldn't duplicate until near the end of the war.  But with the fortuitous discovery that cataract patients could see the lights, the Allies were able to detect when the German night troops were using this gear.

The cataract surgery back then involved complete removal of the eye's inner crystalline lens.  To compensate, the patients had to wear “Coke bottle” lenses in their glasses.  The natural crystalinne lense is opaque to ultraviolet light, but the external glass lenses were not – so for the first time in their lives, these patients had ultraviolet light impinging on their retinas.

Now a much more modern form of cataract surgery, in which the natural crystalline lens is replaced, has produced the same effect – because the replacement lens is made of material that is transparent to ultraviolet light.

FDA Wants to Kill You...

No, really.  From Scott Gottlieb in this morning's WSJ:

How the FDA Could Cost You Your Life

An aortic valve approved in Europe four years ago will soon be approved in the U.S. Meanwhile, thousands who may have benefited from the device have died.

Alpha Dog...

Some pretty darned impressive robotics – coming soon to a combat zone near you:

Just In Case...

Just in case you happen to be one of the eight people on the planet who hasn't already seen this – here's a video of a girl hearing her first sounds after a lifetime of deafness:




The video shows her reaction to the activation of her newly implanted hearing aid.

WTF?

Sometimes (fairly often, actually) when I look at something presented to me as “art”, I fail to find anything entertaining, attractive, intriguing, or interesting about it – no matter how hard I try.  The vast majority of these examples of (to me) incomprehensible art were created in the last 100 years or so.  Here's one of them – a dance clip from Sadler's Wells, a famous London dance house:




Now I'm a huge fan of nearly-naked women, and this performance (if that's the right term) includes some nice examples of that genre. But nearly-naked women with sticks strapped to their heads? And what's with the guys in their underwear on variously bizarre modes of transport? Above all, why would anyone believe this would be art?

Things like this make me feel like I'm missing a gene or two that a lot of other people have.  They see art, I see evidence of civilization headed down the drain...

Jahar, Just Hangin' Around...

Jahar (aka SnickleFritz) is the most recent addition to our menagerie.  He's a little Savannah kitten, just a few months old.  He's currently in the process of being introduced to the rest of our animals, by spending a few hours each day in a smallish cage in a room that our other cats and dogs have access to.  The rest of the time, Jahar lives in our bedroom with the door shut.  That's where I took this video, with a calm Jahar just looking for a little attention and affection.  He's an entirely different beastie when he's “hunting” or playing (pretty much the same thing!).  Jahar:

The Next Bubble?

Quite a few smart people are predicting that student loans will be the next big asset bubble to pop and splatter us all with the detritus.  Some are saying it has already started...

Narratives...

Peggy Noonan on the political narratives of the 2012 Presidential hopefuls:

Here's the problem: There is no story. At the end of the day, there is only reality. Things work or they don't. When they work, people notice, and say it. 

Would the next president like a story? Here's one. America was anxious, and feared it was losing the air of opportunity that had allowed it to be what it was—expansive, generous, future-trusting. It was losing faith in its establishments and institutions. And someone came out of that need who led—who was wise and courageous and began to turn the ship around. And we saved our country, and that way saved the world. 

There's a narrative for you, the only one that matters. Go be a hero of that story. It will get around. It will bubble up.

Read the whole thing.  Sure is nice to have the old Peggy back...

Another One Bites the Dust...

Anwar al-Awlaki is dead, the means unspecified (not that it really matters)...

Coffee! Now!

Via colleague Aleck L., a poster that instantly made me think of Debbie.  For some reason.

Phone Outage...

Way out here in the nether regions of Lawson Valley, we had a telephone outage yesterday.  We didn't find out what the cause was until Debbie stopped and talked with the repair crew.  It seems that some thieves, night before last, climbed ladders up the utility poles, cut through the phone cable between several poles, and made off with the wire to sell as scrap copper.  The chart at right shows the motivation: the price of copper is roughly four times what it was in 2000, though in the past few days copper prices (like those of nearly all commodities) has been plunging.

Gophers aren't bad enough?  We have to have copper thieves, too??

Did You Know?

This was just too good to not share.  I have no idea (and neither does Snopes) whether this story, allegedly written by a rancher, is true – but it is plausible.  And damned funny.  By email from a friend in Estonia who prefers to remain anonymous:

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that since they congregated at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away) that it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, who had seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes my deer showed up…3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it. It took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope with some dignity. A deer, no chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I originally imagined. The only up side is that they do not have as much stamina as many animals. A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head.

At that point I had lost my taste for corn fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual. Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death. I managed to get it lined up to back in between my truck and the feeder…a little trap I had set beforehand. Kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and started
moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head…almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts. The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now) tricked it. While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that when an animal like a horse strikes at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape. This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond I devised a different strategy. I screamed like woman and tried to turn and run. The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that the re is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong
and three times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now when a deer paws at you and knocks you down it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.

Now for the local legend. I was pretty beat up. My scalp was split open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was bleeding pretty good and felt broken (it turned out to be just badly bruised) and my back was bleeding in a few places, though my insulated canvas jacket had protected me from most of the worst of it. I drove to the nearest place, which was the co-op. I got out of the truck, covered in blood and dust and looking like hell. The guy who ran the place saw me through the window and came running out yelling "what happened"

I have never seen any law in the state of Kansas that would prohibit an individual from roping a deer. I suspect that this is an area that they have overlooked entirely. Knowing, as I do, the lengths to which law enforcement personnel will go to exercise their power, I was concerned that they may find a way to twist the existing laws to paint my actions as criminal. I swear….not wanting to admit that I had done something monumentally stupid played no part in my response. I told him "I was attacked by a deer.” I did not mention that at the time I had a rope on it. The evidence was all over my body. Deer prints on the back of my jacket where it had stomped all over me and a large deer print on my face where it had struck me there.

I asked him to call somebody to come get me…I didn't think I could make it home on my own. He did.

Later that afternoon, a game warden showed up at my house and wanted to know about the deer attack. Surprisingly, deer attacks are a rare thing and wildlife and parks was interested in the event. I tried to describe the attack as completely and accurately as I could…I was filling the grain hopper and this deer came out of nowhere and just started kicking the hell out of me and BIT me. It was obviously rabid or insane or something. EVERYBODY for miles around knows about the deer attack (the guy at the co-op has a big mouth). For several weeks people dragged their kids in the house when they saw deer around and the local ranchers carried rifles when they filled their feeders. I have told several people the story, but NEVER anybody around here. I have to see these people every day and as an outsider…a "city folk"…I have enough trouble fitting in without them snickering behind my back and whispering "there is the dumb-ass that tried to rope the deer.

Taking Cain Seriously...

Unlike Rick Perry, Herman Cain I know a bit about.  I've been reading about him ever since his (failed) run for the GOP Senate candidacy in 2004.  I had a personal interest in one of the other candidates (a Democrat with whom I'd had some truly awful business dealings), but Cain turned out to be the more interesting candidate in that race, his loss notwithstanding.

The main thing I see in Cain that I like is not directly political at all.  It's this: he appears to be a normal human being, self-made, and competent as hell.  There are darned few other players on the national political stage about whom I could comfortably make that statement.

But until this week, the punditosphere hasn't seemed to take Herman Cain seriously at all.  He was rather cavalierly dismissed as “unelectable” and third-tier.  With what I know today, given a choice between voting for Cain and voting for any conceivable Democratic opponent (i.e., Obama or Clinton), Cain gets my vote in a walk.  You might think that's not much of a statement, as you might think that any conceivable Republican candidate should win that contest.  However, for most of the matchups I can imagine (say, Obama v. Romney), my inclination is to decline to vote – as it's largely a waste of my time.  Cain would get my vote (again, with what I know right now)...

But the punditosphere may be recalibrating Mr. Cain...

Better Definition of an Ampere...

A breakthrough involving graphene may lead us (finally!) to a definition of the ampere directly derived from the electron charge...

Intimidated Republicans...

Via reader Simon M.:

Somewhere there's a newspaper headline editor who either (1) badly needs a refresh of his idiomatic English, or (2) has an excellent sense of humor!