08 Mar 2010
Yesterday
  • Mucked out part of barn stalls to get doors operating.
  • Sorted sheep - got breeding flock into back paddock.
  • Moved fleece flock to front pasture.
  • Moved goats to sheep stalls for cleanout
  • Washed eggs
  • Fixed heater on back porch.
  • Rigged brooder box, built heat lamp stand
  • Cleaned out back porch
  • Bagged trash from porch and garage
  • Did laundry
  • Purchased 6 pullet chicks
  • Purchased regular critter feed
  • Went grocery shopping for mom
  • Went grocery shopping for us
  • Set up back porch brooder
  • Unloaded feed
  • Fixed dinner
  • Moved fleece flock back to barn
  • Fed sheep, goats, chickens - gathered eggs
  • Ate dinner
  • Went to bed

That's what we did yesterday between the two of us. No wonder I was too tired to blog.

21:12 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

07 Mar 2010
Too Tired to Blog Tonight

sometimes a title says it all...

22:07 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

06 Mar 2010
Meeting Day

Today was the annual meeting of SWIFT - Spinners and Weavers of Indiana Fibers and Textiles. Lorraine, of course, had to be there. It's essentially a large "spin in", with more wool and spinnings wheels than you can imagine.

She had a blast, and since it was held at Connor Prairie, I got to visit a bit with my good friend Kevyn. He's got a fine yearling Horned Dorset ram that I'd like to stand to my Blackie girls later this year - we just might get something worked out.

I also got a chance to putz about in the city for a bit, a rarity for me, and went window shopping at a couple of electronics stores and browsed a used book emporium. The only purchase I made was at the book store: The Definitive Guide to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, which shows exactly how far sucked in I've gotten...

All in all, a very pleasant, very spring like day. It's about time.

21:39 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

05 Mar 2010
Human Culture, an Evolutionary Force

Nice to find some scientific support for my holdings on the whole folkish-universalist argument.

It's not nature vs. nurture, it's nature and nurture.

Culture has become a force of natural selection, and if it should prove to be a major one, then human evolution may be accelerating as people adapt to pressures of their own creation.

(link) [New York Times]

19:32 /Asatru | 0 comments | permanent link

02 Mar 2010
The Internet? Bah!

A lot has changed in 15 years, eh?

The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

(link) [Newsweek]

07:51 /Technology | 1 comment | permanent link

01 Mar 2010
Rumors of Spring

The temperature climbed above 40°F today for the first time this year. It's supposed to hit 57°F Sunday - I'll believe it when I feel it. We still have about 30 inches of snow (down from over 48) drifting the driveway shut, but we can no longer drive through the yard as it's become a mud pit. So we're parking by the outer gate - not a bad walk, really, but it sure will be good to get my driveway back.

I haven't seen the record books, but would be willing to bet that this was the snowiest winter in at least two decades, and probably back to the blizzard years of '78 and '79.

Maybe the winter really is ending, after all, and spring is on the horizon. Or perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part.

20:06 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

28 Feb 2010
The Future of Money

I have a bit of experience in this arena, and I can tell you right now, these folks only have half the equation. Take a look at the conversion chart with it's multiplicity of online "currencies" and ask yourself how conversions between them, much less handling processing of payments, can ever possibly be free...

The short answer is they can't. The real answer is another question: free to whom?

A generation ago, when people made the choice to switch to plastic, credit cards did not just replicate cash; they fundamentally changed how we used money. The ease with which people could make purchases encouraged them to buy much more than they had in the past. Entrepreneurs suddenly had access to easy — though high-interest — loans, providing a spark to the economy. Now, while it may be hard to predict what innovations PayPal’s platform will enable, it’s safe to say that the payment industry is going to change dramatically. As money becomes completely digitized, infinitely transferable, and friction-free, it will again revolutionize how we think about our economy.

(link) [Wired]

12:20 /Technology | 1 comment | permanent link

America, the Fragile Empire

Very interesting read ...

It is historians who retrospectively portray the process of imperial dissolution as slow-acting. Rather, empires behave like all complex adaptive systems. They function in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable period. And then, quite abruptly, they collapse.

(link) [Los Angles Times]

12:09 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

27 Feb 2010
Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage

Truth will always out - and you can cast the "we don't want to jail women" rhetoric of the "right to life" movement on the dustbin of history ...

The bill passed by legislators amends Utah's criminal statute to allow the state to charge a woman with criminal homicide for inducing a miscarriage or obtaining an illegal abortion.

(link) [Reality Check]

11:25 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

The Future Won’t Be Free

Ah, yes, we took the digital acid. Anything free is by definition bad, so much so that using free software could get you declared an enemy of the state. (Sign me up for that!)

These folks seem to think that we shouldn't have a right to read, that history should be locked down and doled out, and that knowledge must be controlled. They long for the Middle Ages, before the printing press, when human knowledge was their exclusive province, and those questioning their authority could be inquired after.

Pardon my Anglo-Saxon, but fuck them ... information not only wants to be free, it will be. And there's no power in heaven or on earth that can stop it now. The future will be free, one way or another.

In the long run, the first decade of the Web could come to be seen as a momentary aberration—an echo of '60s free culture when we all took the bad, digital acid. So, media companies, on behalf of all misdirected Internet visionaries, I'm sorry. We like you—we really do—and we don't want a world without you. If you can hold on until we all have new kinds of screens, and new sets of expectations, you'll be fine. You'll be different, but fine. Just, please, don't take my word for it this time. Ask around.

(link) [Newsweek]

11:20 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

26 Feb 2010
Sucked In

Years ago, it was pretty easy for me to get sucked into a book. That's becoming increasingly rare, perhaps due to a lack of good books, but more likely due to simple laziness on my part. However, this week was different - we happened to catch a movie that we'd both heard about, but had both pretty much ignored, assuming it was a play to cash in on the popularity of the Harry Potter and Narnia movies, none of which particularly excited us. The Golden Compass kept our undivided attention for all 113 minutes - I was absolutely intrigued, so much so that I went out and got the books - His Dark Materials and a DVD of the movie at a used bookstore a couple of days after we watched it. That was last weekend, and explains my lack of blogging for the week - about a thousand pages.

We liked the movie a lot - the books are even better. There's so much more you can do in the way of back (and side) stories in a book than in a movie. And what a story! Phillip Pullman is a master storyteller, and an excellent writer. If you're like us, and either never heard of these tales or blew them off as child's play, think again. I cannot recommend this series highly enough.

20:21 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

21 Feb 2010
School Officials Likened to Peeping Toms

Paging Mr. Orwell...

The family that sued to get a suburban Pennsylvania school district to stop secretly viewing students at home via webcams on school-issued laptops is blasting the practice, though it's been halted.

(link) [CBS News]

16:40 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Who's Platform?

Obama? Clinton? Dennis Kucinich?

  • We are proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance —improved housing—and better health protection for all our people.
  • In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human.
  • We shall continue vigorously to support the United Nations.
  • Further reductions in taxes with particular consideration for low and middle income families.
  • Procedural changes in the antitrust laws to facilitate their enforcement.
  • Revise and improve the Taft-Hartley Act so as to protect more effectively the rights of labor unions, management, the individual worker, and the public.
  • We favor a comprehensive study of the effect upon wildlife of the drainage of our wetlands.
  • We favor self-government, national suffrage and representation in the Congress of the United States for residents of the District of Columbia.

Nope. We've come a long way, eh?

via DailyKOS

13:47 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Old Trick Threatens the Newest Weapons

CNN ran a special tonight on a wargame held recently called cyber.shockwave. A group of hackers (state organized or not) had managed to take down the telecom and power grids in the US ... pretty ridiculous scenerio, really. I think they've completely missed the point of cyberwar. The real dangers of a war in cyberspace was covered by the New York Times last October. Read it below.

Despite a six-year effort to build trusted computer chips for military systems, the Pentagon now manufactures in secure facilities run by American companies only about 2 percent of the more than $3.5 billion of integrated circuits bought annually for use in military gear.

(link) [New York Times]

02:10 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

19 Feb 2010
Short Term Bottle Baby

If you recall our recent Snow Day Surprise, you'll no doubt recall my quip that if there'd been a twin ram lamb he would've been called Clyde... well ...

Tim called up a week ago Wednesday, when I was so sick, and asked if we'd like a bottle baby. A ewe of his, a North Country Cheviot, who had been bred to a Blue Face Leicester, had dried up just after throwing twins. The ewe lamb was already gone, but the little ram lamb was hangin' on by the skin of his teeth. Tim's just got too many irons in the fire right now to deal with a bottle baby, and he figured if anybody could get the little fellow healthy we could. So Lorraine said sure.

And of course we called him Clyde.

He really does look like Bonnie's twin, eh? And is he ever active - it didn't take us long to get him back to peak condition. But we've got a lot of irons in the fire right now, too, and despite the fact that he'll have a beautiful fleece, it's just not the kind of fleece we want to concentrate on in our breeding program. So we found Clyde a new home, with Amber Meadow Farm in Shelby County (website not available), and Roxa came and got him today. He'll pretty much complete her spinners flock, and she was just delighted with him. Of course she brought some friends along for the ride, and before they'd left we'd taken orders for five fleeces! So it all worked out in the end for everybody. Especially Clyde. Who will no doubt be renamed. I hope.

19:56 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

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