Along the north side of the Mississinewa Reservoir are several "State Recreation Areas", SRA's, each with distinctive attractions. One of my favorites has always been the shelter house at Frances Slocum SRA, but in recent years it has become a meeting spot for MSM, and I sometimes have lowered trust in my tolerance.

Today, it was wet and rainy, and no one was there, so my dogs had a couple of acres to make sport for themselves.

I sat on a picnic table in the shelter and watched an Osprey work the lake.

The water was choppy from the breeze, and I thought the raptor was too high to spot anydamthing.

This is reverse anthropomorphism, assigning human characteristics to animals, along with our shortcomings, including our visual prowess, or lack thereof.

According to Kate Davis, in Falcons of North America, "Raptors have at least two and a half - perhaps even as much as six or eight - times the visual acuity (ability to distinguish detail) of humans: theirs is possibly the most acute vision in the animal world. Plus they have fast vision, or the ability to assimilate detail rapidly".

Parallax, the bane of "affordable" binoculars, is an apparent displacement of orientation of an object, caused by changing one's line of sight with indiscernible eye adjustment, without actually moving the glass. Raptors utilize parallax error to determine distance. This is most obvious in the American Kestrel, often observed bobbing its head, to produce this effect.

So the big, beautiful, masterful Osprey was exactly where it needed to be, while I would need to stick my head underwater to have a chance of spotting prey.

Frances Slocum was born to East Pennsylvania Quakers in 1773 and taken by the Delaware Indians in the fall of 1778. She survived all and spent most of her years as Maconaquah (The Little Bear, and you can guess why), and when found by her brothers in 1837, "after years of persistent search" - from her gravestone/monument: persistent? like 60 damn years? only persistent? - she was completely assimilated, as one might imagine.

Despite that "The Little Bear" handle, she seems to have married well, and prospered, as did her children.

She died in 1847, aged 74, again a testament that our native Americans were hardly savages, didn't live in skin huts, and farmed and medicated quite successfully.

An odd story. The early summer of 1778 saw the Wyoming (Valley) Massacre near Wilkes-Barre, and most settlers fled the area. The Slocums chose to remain, and Frances was taken, bloodlessly, several months later. She survived the horrors of 1812-1813 along the Mississinewa and Upper Wabash. And her brothers conducted a "persistent search" for 60 years?

That's keeping the faith!

And Now, As Promised, Some Birds

There are two bridges spanning Mississinewa Reservoir, IN SR 13 and Red Bridge. South from Red Bridge the road esses through some dense cover, and there is usually something of interest.

And there was a red tail, settling onto a powerline, with a bit more balancing than the light breeze would require, and I noted the mouse in his beak.

There is a twenty-yard berm on either side of the road, and I have seen this wonderful hawk several times in the same area, and must guess I missed the denouement by moments, as the rodent hung limp.

On the north side of Red Bridge I had seen a snake on the road, and backed up to check its mortal status. I did a really bad job of reverse steering, watching the snake instead of the road, and when I finally stopped next to it, his skull had been smeared.

Yeah, probably.

I became quite aware of the Oneness of Life in the Arizona Desert, 1973. It got so bad I didn't want to walk the deserts for fear of stepping on anything. I've kind of gotten past that, as I swat mosquitoes and flies, but I surely hope that snake's head didn't see my tires last.

Don't know what the snake was (had been), and I haven't seen many in the last 10 - 15 years, so don't have a field guide. A websearch turned up only a Copperhead, but, compared with the ones I met in Alabama and Mississippi, this one had missed meals for a few years.

Would appreciate any "looks like a Copperhead" suggestions. You know, like a Corn Snake looks like a Coral Snake.

Except it might be a smidgen more tricky, as my snake lacked a head.

Jalapa is a village, really, an unincorporated town, across a limestone slab ford in the Mississinewa River from the Mississinewa Battlefield. Just east a high bridge crosses the river, and a Great Egret and a Great Blue Heron were in a pool upstream (south) of the bridge.

The first weekend in October, there is an annual, hugely successful reenactment of the locally famous battle from the War of 1812, when future President William Henry Harrison cleared north-central Indiana of the people living here.

I have not been to the "celebration", for no particular reason.

I was too ill to walk my dogs, and searched for a place they could make some fun for themselves, and found the outside of the show grounds.

There was a problem. There were frameworks for dwellings, and a stick fort. The "housing" was low, three feet tall at most, hogan-type stick frames. Except those were used by nomads. The people that lived here lived here, in framed houses with shingled roofs. There are two tribal leader houses (chief is a pretty repulsive word, considering how all Indian society was structured), one in Huntington County, the other in Wabash County, both from the earliest 19th Century, both brick.

So the 1812 Reenactment is a total sham, and perpetuates the myth of redskins, heathens, savages, that powered Manifest Destiny, and left all of us white folk a legacy of genocide to rival any, anywhere.

Okay, I won't be going, but will torch all that shit this winter.

There were two more egrets in the reservoir headwaters, and a heron in the water and an egret in a tree at Grant Creek, which holds water when the reservoir is at summer pool.

Lots of beautiful, beautiful birds.

I had an extended conversation via e-mail with a most dear friend regards "forcing" wildlife photographs. Specifically, the camera guy spooked an owl off a nest for an "in-flight action" shot.

I think this is turdly behavior.

In that spirit, I acknowledge the photo of the egret and the heron passing is superimposed.

I chose to use it because it expresses my amazement at how often I see the two paired.

They are like blood kin, each the same size, the same feeding requirements, and they are wholly tolerant of each other.

Life lesson?

I was at a little cemetery this evening. It's bounded on three sides by an Amish dairy operation.

On the back side is a lane to the pastures. About thirty yards from my visit, a bull (yeah, a real bull), had stopped to check us out. After about three minutes, my giant Abbe literally left the county. My little puppy Sun locked gaze with the bull, barked a few times, and the bull moved on. He stopped to call several times, but he never looked back.

He outweighed Sun 1200 lbs to 20.

Teddy Roosevelt, a truly lugubrious writer, said "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog".

My puppy will never be in a fight, but I was pretty damn proud of him.

Uzbekistan - Central Asian Hell, a Toilet on the Silk Road

Okay, I've done some research.

"Instead of using machines to harvest cotton, as is done in other major cotton exporting countries, Uzbekistan's government uses children. Every autumn state officials shut down schools, and send students, together with their teachers, to the cotton fields. Tens of thousands of children, some as young as seven, are forced to undertake weeks of arduous labour for little or no financial reward. Headmasters are issued with cotton quotas and made to ensure that students pick the required daily amount. Children who fail to pick their target of cotton are reportedly punished with detentions and told that their grades will suffer. Those who refuse to take part can face academic expulsion." Environmental Justice Foundation

Uzbekistan is totally fucked up. The only hope is to extirpate everyone under the age of twenty-one and let the rest wallow in the man-made hell they choose to perpetuate.

The USSR dissolved with a speech by Gorbachev on Christmas Day, 1991, and and the Bush (41) Administration, with nothing much else to do, recognized the Nation of Uzbekistan that same day. With, oh, I don't know, a few days' consideration, they would wisely have chosen to bomb the "nation" into talc and looked for diplomatic success elsewhere.

Had we had done that, know that the large majority of the 200,000 children toiling, getting sick without medical attention, dependent on polluted water and choked with the dust, dust, dust, and lint of cotton harvesting, and dying, eight documented in 2008, would not have been born into this state required servitude, this very real state required slavery.

Uzbekistan, at 800,000 metric tons, is the Number Two producer of cotton in the world. There is very little local demand, so that a minimum of three-quarters of these tons are exported. The crop is worth big money in Central Asia, but there is little Reagan trickle-down: the government takes a minimum of 60% off the top.

Doesn't leave much for ten-year-old boys and girls. And they are the victims of the old Coal Company Store economy, and actually pay for the prison-bus rides to the fields.

Some sick stuff:

http://www.ejfoundation.org/page142.html

Some more sickening stuff:

http://www.ejfoundation.org/pdf/white_gold_the_true_cost_of_cotton.pdf

I'm sure you all caught this, but the Uzbek government uses children instead of mechanical cotton pickers to save (make) money. Work didn't begin on mechanical pickers in the American South until they lost a hideous war, and free human labor.

There is a major problem here, as one might guess. His name is President Islam Karimov. Uzbekistan is a totalitarian dictatorship led by this former Soviet official, in rigid and unassailable control.

If only Bush (43) had pulled his coke-fried head out of his oil-moneyed ass for a few cogent moments, perhaps he could have done a bit of good (an iota would be any, a little, some) by removing this unholy turd, on the cheap, instead of the $Trillions we have poured onto Saddam's grave.
Sorry. I'm amazed we survived Bush, and even more amazed he abdicated.
Now, if we can get the the World's most ignorant, self-serving, owned, political body, our own Republicans (gratuitous capitalization) to take a few cogent moments and realize Medicare/Medicaid are government funded medical assurance programs for seniors, maybe President Obama can stop spending days on something so obviously necessary and devote some time to the hellhole that is Uzbekistan.

Tomorrow: some birds!

Everything you think you know about Corvus brachyrhynchos, the American crow, is wrong.

Anyone who knows anything about crows and uses the term "bird brain" is one, and should crave enlightenment from any bird, and work up a very long ladder to crow smarts.

Crows are easily tamed, but that doesn't mean this magnificent bird should be kept in a cage.
The corvid will surely stay as long as you hold up your end of the relationship, but "capture" violates the basic tenet, trust.

Ducks Unlimited is a most wonderful organization, too often disparaged by contrarians as "save the ducks so we can kill them". A very real fact is most DU members and supporters don't shoot ducks.

A majority of people still do good for goods sake. DU has worked to restore damp and wet lands , preferred, required, by ducks and geese, over much of the midwest and prairie, with stunning results.

State government is involved. In the early 60's, there were very few deer in Indiana, almost no ducks, no Canada geese, no wild turkeys, no coyotes.

All are back, and the complaints are many.

Unless you need your amusement manufactured, wouldn't it be better to enjoy Canada geese than complain because they shit on your golf course? As you have witnessed here, you can see deer, ducks, wild turkeys and coyotes, red tail hawks, American Kestrels, from the engineered comfort of your personal transportation module. All were gone 40 years ago. Now, lucky you!

Crows are adept at facial recognition, so don't expect to parade your "training" skills: your Corvid friend will most likely ignore another human.

What crows aren't experts at is dodging lead. They have been hated and hunted and destroyed since white people, who respect only the multi-parsed Word, arrived to denude the continent. Use everything. All. Use it all up. God says.

American Indians recognized the crow as an important mover in the world, along with coyotes, owls, eagles and horses. And others.

In Mexico, where native Indians are treated with respect, the crow is acknowledged as a deity, a god of creation thousands of years old, older than yours, unless you acknowledge the earth as your father and your mother. If, instead, you are looking at some cosmic, superuniverse, god of all known and unknown, you are, in the gospel of Neil Young, " just pissin' in the wind, you don't know it, but you are" and need to look closer to home for what matters. Like, maybe, in your home.

As with everything else in this country, greed reduced hundreds of millions of ducks to thousands, and less. Rennovation eforts began, ironically, with the US Government, and the Federal Duck Stamp program (buy one now, and know your money is well spent), which raised the kind of money not just to put ducks in the air, but to grow ducks on the ground. A wonderful Federal Program.

Enter the crow. All protected birds are "migratory" birds. These are the beloved warblers, my raptors, and mourning doves, robins, jays, and ducks, geese, crows. The crow is classed a migratory bird, with seasonal protections, at the demand of the Mexican Government, who refused to protect ducks unless the US protected crows.

And we're the religious ones. Those damn tablets mean nothing to those who display them. "Keep Holy the Lord's Day"? How you do that shopping, mowing the grass, drinking beer & watching NASCAR, NFL?

"Do Not Bear False Witness"? April 15th would be a really good Federal haul, and those who need it most would benefit largely.

"No Graven Images"? So why am I reading The Big X at a stoplight?

"Sanctity of Marriage"? Remove a kidney from the bride & groom, and divorce forfeits both to a national pool.

So today I saw a large flock, a murder, of crows in the back lot of a farmhouse being renovated or abandoned. Big bunch. Maybe 35, or 40 or more. The beans hadn't been cut, so the attraction wasn't obvious, just a bunch of MENSA birds out looking for fun.

Went to the Converse Cemetery yesterday, and there was an old friend, a red tail, leaving from the round-about cedar I was seeking for some shade. He didn't seem perturbed, and left for distance, with no vocal protest.

There is a very impressive word, anthropomorphism, to dissuade a researcher from becoming too familiar with himself or herself in terms of the observed.
Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, Fearless Fly, Yogi Bear, and Sherman and Peabody, defined the term, animals functioning as humans in a human world.
Then Beavis and Butthead began an extended run on MTV, and anthropomorphism was compromised, was neutered, because the show characterised these "stars" as humans.

The birds and animals we admire, the birds we seek, the animals we love, Condors and Polar Bears and Baby Seals, the Siberian Tigers and Panda Bears and everybody else is in danger of extinction, except for refuges and zoos, and is that living? Reproducing for reintroduction into a disappeared habitat?

The Baby Seal cause is laudable, but, know, they kill the mother first, as she will inflict grievous harm on nest robbers. And the seal is left on the floe, and the pup is skinned, cured, and the babyhide makes children's booties and that shit people hang on rearview mirrors. I have seen this and know it is true: drainage ditches piled high, dammed, with seal carcasses, skinned, just skinned. It is the same abomination as when President U. S. Grant determined to discomfit the Lakota tribes of the Dakatoa by launching the first biological war, a siege without borders, as over-armed "heroes" piled up carcasses along railroads through Indian Territory, their territory until we want it.
In contremps, as the Newfoundlander continues to maim and butcher and waste every part but the baby fur, supplemental income, the Lakota live on some of their traditional lands, with no bison, live in the poorest counties in the US.
Next time you're in the area, Southeast Montana and Northwest and-central South Dakota, check out the Little Bighorn Monument. According to "Son of the Morning Star", Custer was making hay off a totally mediocre Civil War Cavalry Commander Career, and was being promoted as a possible Presidential candidate. He attempted to defeat an amassed Lakota Sioux encampment, and was outnumbered, underprepared, ignorant. He raced ahead of his supply trains, and fragmented the force that could have harmlessly extricated itself from this colossal mistake. These detachments were swiftly disposed, leading to "the glorious destruction" of the 7th Cavalry.
Retribution was murderous: on the morning of December 29, 1890, the 7th Cavalry, which included 4 Hotchkiss artillery pieces, opened up on the Village of Wounded Knee. 300 men, women, and children were killed. Other accounts suggest the men had crept away in the night, trusting the US not to slaughter women and children.
Mistake

The Custer Monument in Montana is a living celebration of one arrogant, incompetent nincompoop general.
The Wounded Knee site is a Church on a hill with a graveyard, and there is not a pop-machine to be found on the dirt streets of the village. We didn't care then, hell, we bragged, we never cared, we don't care now, and we will never care.

This is the end of Anthropomorphism. It has no meaning, no veracity.
Anthropomorphism died with this report: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article5877764.ece
discusses a chimpanzee who shapes and hoards stones to later throw at zoogoers.

It ain't talking English, like we feel people must do to live here, while not listening to this chimp's language is just going to make you that much fucking stupider.

I saw a hawk on a cross-bar, new hawk, not my familiar red tail. It had bold stripes on the underside of the tail, and I, myopically, seized on this as a "distinguishing feature". And I was hoping for a Red Shouldered Hawk, but the tail bars on the underside were not.
Not a Red Shouldered Hawk.
Best guess, a Cooper's Hawk, even if she shouldn't have been there.
And this evening in a dead tree by some low ground was a Sharp-Shinned Hawk.
Maybe not. Long range, weak glass, but if I wanted to trap and fly a sharp-shinned hawk, I would try to trap this one.
Several weeks ago there was a Turkey Vulture spread out like it was nailed to a tree at Red Bridge. It looked like that bird in The Third Reich whitepower movies. The term for this is "sunning", spreading as widely as possible.
It is most impressive.
This evening I saw that a large plastic trash bag had been tossed into the same tree , except it was a stretched Turkey Vulture, sunning, and went on.
These birds are too easily dismissed, "buzzards", but are very watchable.
One glided across the inside face of Mississinewa Dam as I slowed and followed, about a mile and a half, the huge bird using the heat of the reservoir and a light easterly breeze for occasional lift: in a mile and a half, over the open water, never in the least flapped, never used the wings to make lift or propulsion, only to glide, lift when there was any from the drafts.

Everything you know about Turkey Vultures is wrong. Without a large population of large falcons, cruising at 3000, 4000, 5000, feet or more, hunting, we have no other magnificent kiters, birds that soar for minutes and minutes and more, with an occasional bent of feather.
There seems to be a wealth of free meals for a carrion cleaner, and they are largely provided by people in overpowered automobiles reluctant to slow for any problems, someone else's problems.

Driving up to Mississinewa Reservoir, on the Slocum Trail, on the way to let the dogs out (yeah, it was me. Glad that "?song?" is buried. Although it's probably playing on a loop tape in hell, along with some Barry Manilow and Journey), we came up a rise and the world was filled with a Turkey Vulture in glide, thirty feet away and ten feet up. A Turkey Vulture's wing span can approach six feet, much wider than your car.
As I slowed even more, a red tail came up off the south berm and headed north, a few feet away, without whatever it had, so the vulture was successful.
I'm sure, or hope, that other people see this kind of stuff all the time, but I surely feel gifted.
As if it mattered, there were few birds about, none I could identify.
There was an arbitrary line between beans and corn, and what I thought was a kestrel went off a wire after something as I approached, but stayed with it, and I couldn't see any sign of predator or prey.
When I was in junior high I had a paper route, and took advantage of an offer to subscribe to some magazines for about ten cents a week. Two, Argosy and True, men's magazines are, sadly, no longer with us.
Another, Field & Stream, was cautioning, fifty years ago, about the loss of game habitat as fences and fencerows were removed from farmfields.
A reason was more efficient harvesting left little reason to turn farm animals out.
Another was the rise in confined animal feeding operations, beastial, malevolent, wasteful, artificial, growth sites that wreck the environment and build viral immunity to the eight (as in eight) remaining, effective antibiotics.
This crap is necessary, as cattle, even with four stomachs, cannot digest grain, which is the staple CAFO feed. And hogs live on slotted floors above a pool of their own waste.
Never mind chickens, who lead the most horrible lives, from egg to slaughter.
All to feed our insatiable appetite for flesh.
And it ain't healthy.
Along with me, wonder how a nation that can't keep track of four hijacked airliners can assure you that a cow gone mad was actually from a specific farm in Canada?
The fences are gone except for the Amish, and gone, too, are the quail, pheasant, and rabbits.
I may have seen the last pheasant in Tipton County, IN, as they were all gone by 1964.

There was a red tail on a utility crossbar, who availed himself of the opportunity of our passing to soar and loop back to the exact same spot.
And, just as there were trees along the road, I spotted a red tail on high, 600 feet, cruising.
Damn trees. But don't worry, we're fixing that, too.

Yesterday, a crowd gathered in DC to protest "Big Government". According to the New York Times the crowd was larger than expected, was profane and abusive, and included single-issue folks like gun advocates.
They had some totally offensive words for President Obama, who has inherited the most dismal mess since the sadly brain-damaged Gerald Ford assumed Nixon's morass.
The ostensible purpose of the assemblage was to oppose runaway government spending.
Okay, where have these "Guardians of the Public Weal" been?
According to Wikipedia, the Halcyon years of the Devil's Spawn Reagan assumed a Public Debt of 909 billion dollars. When the woefully inadequate George Herbert Walker Bush left office, according to the US Treasury website (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np) , after twelve years of "responsible government", the National Debt was $4.188 trillion, an increase of 460%, or 38% every year. Where were the protests?
After eight years of the constantly criticized, fucking impeached, Bill Clinton, the National Debt had risen to $5.728 trillion, a total growth of 25 % over eight years. Less than inflation?
And here comes the idiot son, Bush(43), a privileged "C" student, a failure at every goddam thing, running a baseball team, oilfield investments, weekend service in the Air National Guard. So how does a drunken cokehead do with OUR economy?
In his too long, excruciatingly long, Banana Republic Dictatorship, with the suspension of Human Rights and the violation or annulment of six of the amendments known as "The Bill of Rights", the usurpation of Congressional oversight, and another, very important nullification, suspension of habeas corpus, "body of evidence", which mandates that there must be reason for one to be detained, "W" sodomized the nation and its working people, we taxpayers.
The Writ of Habeas Corpus is guaranteed by Article One of the Constitution, and is only to be suspended during times of insurrection (Lincoln ordered suspension during the Civil War, surely in compliance) and armed intrusion (Bush ordered suspension when a bunch of Saudis boarded domestic flights armed with boxcutters, surely not).
And our debt? Bush assumed a National Debt, on Inauguration Day (so much blacker than 9/11/01) of $5.728 trillion dollars. He left President Obama, on 1/22/09, with $10.625 trillion in debt.
Add two six-year-old moneypit wars, and an unemployment rate that grew, or crashed, from 4.2% in 1/01/ to 7.6% in 1/09.
So where have these protesters been? The economy is in hell, jobs are gone, we are dumping our money into bottomless holes in Afghanistan and Iraq. And we have the worst healthcare system in the Free World, and people in Canada and England, who have socialized medical care, live longer in five of six categories, male and female, while the other is a tie.
So, really, I know these people on the Capitol Mall yesterday are easily the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet, in the universe, but that is not the problem.
They are not the problem. The problem is why are they so goddammed stupid? Why do the most moronic, most uninformed, most oblivious, most ignorant, mush-brained people in the world even exist?
Our Nation provides 12 years of free education, and 10 are mandatory. With the least effort and application, anyone can go to college.
Success isn't guaranteed, but encouraged, because universities aren't funded for low graduation rates.
Another problem: these people are not just stupid, undereducated, misinformed, painfully ignorant, but malleable. After eight years of the most flagrant abuses of the Constitution and its Amendments, after thousands of billions of our dollars were burned to enrich a West Texas Oilman's petroleum portfolio, how have these cretins accrued a right to protest?
How does a Nation stand mute while a runaway Administration pirated every asset, squandered every resource, throttled every whit of global goodwill?
And now they protest?

This formatter stymies my skills, and I can't center the photo descriptions.

The above are an outgrown cemetery in Sarajevo, a barricade to protect people from sniper fire, and a facade's destruction from artillery fire.

Though not usually at a loss for apropos description, I cannot summon an adequate vocabulary to describe this breathing manifestation of all things wrong with humans.

He directed the shelling of Sarajevo, along with the snipers who, from the surrounding mountains, made leaving those large targets an essay in self destruction.

He waged a war to erase the Muslims in Bosnia, at horror spots like Grozade, Srbenica, Zepa, and Mostar, and many other towns I can't recall.

He set up rape camps, where girls and young women were raped and impregnated, making them unclean in the eyes of the largely moronic Muslin religion.

In many towns and cities in Bosnia, churches and mosques were leveled, property was seized or destroyed, and boys and men were rounded up, shot, and buried with backhoes and bulldozers in massed, shallow graves. Those allowed to live, not worth raping or killing, fled. Ever doubt survivors guilt?

And most of the time the US sat, while our scholars debated whether this really was ethnic cleansing, really was genocide. Like it fucking mattered.

Clinton said the most difficult decision in his presidency was whether to put US troops in harm's way in Bosnia. Would that fuckwit Bush have exercised the same deliberation, we would not have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and thousands of American lives (and only a humanitarian, someone who actually cares, mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, mostly civilians, mostly women and children). Good job, Georgie. No sacrifice quenched your appetite for oil earnings.

So now the guy who ordered and approved all these horrors is on trial at The Hague.

See http://www.iwpr.net/?p=tri&s=f&o=355836&apc_state=henh

And he's saying it's too short notice to prepare a defence.

Hell doesn't last long enough to defend this guy, even as The Hague continues to reduce charges.

If it was one of yours, ever, would you like to see that charge reduced for the sake of expediency?

It almost makes me wish for a hell, a place for those like Karadzic, like Hitler, like Phil Sheridan, like Pol Pot. I'm sure I'm slighting hundreds, thousands of the most horrendous people ever, Richard Speck, Charles Manson, Osama Bin Laden, Ronald Reagan, and etc.

Sadly, no hell should include mass murderers like John Wayne Gacy, Jeffery Dahmer, and George Bush, along with some schmo who had a Slim Jim on Friday during Lent, somebody who missed church on Sunday.

We as a Nation are opposed to "cruel and unusual" punishment. As Christians, we look to an Ultimate Punishment from God.

We should not depend on anyone else to clean up our messes.

Let Karadzic's punishment befit his crimes, and let he die hundreds of thousands of the most painful deaths, over and over and over.

An apology: I did this from my memory of personal studies of atrocity, outrage, and genocide in the Balkans. There are most likely errors, several, or many. My post is my outrage that Karadzic is even alive, never mind lobbying for favors from the Court. All differences will be entertained, unless you think I'm not just wrong on technicality, but wrong in spirit, in which case, get your own blog.

They are free, and easy, else I could never have one.

Our own piss in the bucket of Congress, ass tumor Dan Burton, sent me an 8X11 cardboard flier, at taxpayer expense, with the big bold statement "A Government-Run Health Care System Will Sacrifice Quality and Services for our Seniors" over a background of a Medicare card.
Um, excuse me, buttjob, but what the fuck do you think Medicare is?

I saw a sign today saying "9/11/01: We Will Never Forget".
Forget what? Most people don't even know.
I can't find a current figure, but, at one time, 70% of the US thought Iraq was responsible for 9/11, and that some of the hijackers were Iraqis. Sons of Satan, that's almost as many as those who think a Virgin gave birth and rose into heaven, still a virgin. Highly elastic hymen, maybe?
I couldn't find what I was looking for, but did find this:

http://snopes.com/rumors/falwell.asp

Serious, no god would let these foul vermin use his/her/its name. (May be a cockroach, which would explain 9/11 and Katrina.) Who in hell do Robinson and Falwell blame for Hiroshima & Nagasaki? Do the Japanese agree?

Bush's popularity rose to a 90% approval rating in the wake of 9/11.
I always thought the White House had much to do with the attacks.
Remember when Bush denied it? His rating was 90% approve. Why would he make the charge credible by even acknowledging it?
Lyndon Johnson, one of the very savvy politicians of his day, once instructed his staff to spread a vicious lie about his opponent in an election. He said "We don't have to prove it. Just make the sumnabitch deny it".

Wonkette, in the glory days of founder Ana Marie Cox, had a great game to get you through a Bushspeech: you shoot a drink every time Bush says 9/11.

I saw a red tail on a low pole today, and he ignored us passing, intent on his patch of road and berm. Surely had already spotted movement.

A kestrel on a wire close to a pole stayed, unusual, as we passed.

Kestrels flee. They often loop, and come back to the same place, even the same spot.

From a windshield, American Kestrels and Mourning Doves can blur, with mph. They average within a tenth ounce, and the length difference is in the dove's longer neck. The silhouettes are thus usually dissimilar so as to make a quick ID. The kestrel with that short neck looks like a linebacker, shoulder power, as befits a deadly predator which weighs less than a Big Mac.

The photo intro is of astronaut Charles "Pete" Conrad unfurling our flag on the moon.

My fear is some of you may live to see a landscape quite similar, sans space travel.

There are some very simple rules in regards how to display your flag.

They do not include clothing, window decals, beach towels, plastic clamp-ons for your car, lapel pins, or tattoos.

It's a flag, damnit. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of brave people have sacrificed mental health, body parts, mobility and, ultimately, life, for our flag.

Get it off your ass. Fly it.

How cool is this? The Smithsonian has a website dedicated to Holocene volcanoes.
Most geologists came to the philosophy from a childhood fascination with dinosaurs, and, while I think dinos are much too cool, my first interest was volcanoes. Tuzo Wilson didn't drop the plate tectonics bomb until 1963, and my exposure to volcanoes was about eight years earlier.
There was no suitable mechanism for volcanism (or earthquakes or orogeny, mountain-building), and the first story I recall was of a volcano in Mexico rising from the spot where a farmer flicked a burning cigarette stub. That was Paricutín, which last erupted in 1954, and is the image which appears on top.
Here's the link:

http://www.volcano.si.edu/

So what's so cool about volcanoes?
What J. Tuzo Wilson proposed in 1963 was hot spots, places where the crust of the earth is disturbed by a seemingly endless supply of magma (lava). When you look at a map of the Hawaiian Islands, and track the westernmost, oldest, Kure, back through the youngest, Hawaii, you can appreciate that the crust is passing over a "hot spot", which continues to throw up volcanic islands.
Another notable hot spot is Iceland. In 1963, as if to approve Wilson, Volcano Surtsey literally jumped out of the ocean.
Of more concern to us continentals is the area in south Idaho stretching into Yellowstone Park. This hot spot flooded Idaho and eastern Washington with two miles, two miles, of basalt, volcanic glass. The Snake River canyon, at over 6,000 feet deep, averages a thousand feet deeper than the Grand Canyon, but cuts through dirty brown glass, and lacks the color and beauty of 300 million years of sandstones.
There are at least three calderas, volcano basins, on a line to Yellowstone, where the latest is evident. And old.
All the geothermal activity at Yellowstone results from a hot spot, where the crust is so thin that geysers and bubbling, boiling springs are the norm.
The caldera indicates an eruption of a size to extinct the dinosaurs, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
And it may be soon. The times for each of the eruptions in the caldera chain indicate it is due.
Yellowstone Lake, situated in the center of the caldera, grows more shallow every year, grows as in the lake bed is rising.
A Supervolcano? Yeah, why the hell not. The caldera is about 50 miles across (you can measure Mt. St. Helens in yards). Coming? For sure. Soon? Probably not.
You should worry more about growing old without health insurance, and the fact people actually care what a loser quitter like Sarah! Palin has to say.

Okay, on the off-chance I have any readers, the National Rifle Association never spits, always swallows, and Ted Nugent is whale shit in the Marianas Trench, 7 miles below sea level, where there is no oxygen (too much pressure) and no light. Nuge has his head so far up his ass, for so long, he surely wouldn't notice.

The above photo of a hovering American Kestrel, by Rob Palmer, an absolute genius with a camera, and the ultimate master of raptor photography, is probably copyrighted, so I am probably in violation, but I downloaded it from his site, and, unlike the rest of his work, it wasn't protected. It appears in Kate Davis's Falcons of North America, easily and by far the most lavishly illustrated paperback ever, with, among others, photos by Nick Dunlop, also.

This evening I watched a kestrel come off a fencepost perch in pursuit of a sparrow.

World War I, the "war to end all wars", gave us another killing legacy besides trench warfare and biological weaponry, mustard gas, thought to be so nefarious that its usage was banned by International Treaty. There are cheese-eating surrender monkeys afoot who would posit Agent Orange was the first violation of this treaty, and napalm a close second, but that argument will wait, as the victims of both continue to die.

Another first for WW I was aerial combat, "dogfights" in unfortunate parlance, pitting fighter pilots in mostly meaningless encounters (sorry, Red Baron). There were two notable developments: synchronous-firing machine guns, which allowed pilots to shoot through the propeller blades without shearing them off, and the Immelmann roll, or turn, which put a pursued plane on the tail of its pursuer.

The little sparrow did a perfect 3/4 Immelman, and escaped. The kestrel, powering up for pursuit, was totally out of the chase, and went on.

I will always root on the kestrel, but have only admiration for the sparrow's perfect escape.

We had at least a thousandth-inch of rain today, and I checked some gravel sideroads, and found several kestrels, very heartening. I found no red tails today, and was surely looking in all the wrong places.

Little, if any, solace.

This morning I watched a Falco sparverius, an American Kestrel, drop from a wire onto the berm and, apparently, come up empty. This is not a big surprise, as 25 to 35 percent of attacks are failures. This in the East: the wide-open West is less fruitful.

As I approached a bridge just north of town this evening, a bird dropped into the creek. I stopped, got out(!), and looked, but never saw the bird come up. I spooked five UNK ducks (don't fret; had I glassed them for an hour they would likely still be unidentified) and as I stood, exhausted from my efforts, a Great Blue Heron came in for a landing. The high arch of the wings is most awesome, as the bird's mass requires all the wingspan and its lift to support it in a glide.

I saw several kestrels today, and am heartened, not just because I want one, I need one, I crave one to fly, but they are just the best to observe, from any vantage, from any angle.
I was sure I saw a Falco columbarius, a Merlin on the top of a pole. It was a wanna. I desperately want to see a Merlin and instead of determining how it was a Merlin, I focused on why it wasn't.
For roughly 100,000 years, humans have fancied answers to questions that have no answers. My Merlin could have been any falcon. He was surely a kestrel.
With the thousands of questions we have answered in the last 150 years, people cling to, totally embrace, the most unlikely explanations for the most existential concerns.
There are no ghosts, there are no spirits, there are no angels, there is no heaven, there is no hell, there is no devil, there is no god.
Accept these most simple truths, get used to them, and get on with whatever time you have left. It's all you have. Use it. It's all you get.

There is some agreement among biologists that falcons are more closely related to owls than to hawks. A partial explanation may lie in the geological record, with raptors emerging in the Eocene (along with the earliest horse, Eohippus, Hyracotherium, in North America.) No modern falcon fossils exist in the geologic record prior to about 2 million years ago.
The supposed relationship between falcons and owls is to be determined through genome analyses. Such research is in the backseat while really important stuff, like attaching a cloned body to Ted Williams' cryrogenicly preserved, frozen head, is JobOne.

Here is a link to a rather depressing report, "State of the Birds", in PDF. Deal with the page format size, but it beat me.

http://www.stateofthebirds.org/pdf_files/State_of_the_Birds_2009.pdf

A most sobering quote from this report:
"More bird species are vulnerable to extinction in
Hawaii than anywhere else in the United States.
Before the arrival of humans, the Hawaiian
Islands supported 113 bird species unique in the
world, including flightless geese, ibis, rails, and 59
species of Hawaiian honeycreepers.
Since humans arrived, 71 bird species have become
extinct and 31 more are federally listed as
threatened or endangered. Of these, 10 have not
been seen in as long as 40 years and may be extinct.
Humans have introduced many bird species
from other parts of the world: 43% of 157 species
are not native. Among landbirds, 69% are introduced
species."
I don't know if the report refers to all people, or just whites. I do know the brown snake has been a terror for every living thing. Air traffic has been long documented as the brown snake's introduction to paradise.
Adjust your seat to the full, upright position, and ignore that squirming mass around your ankles.

The movie "Hawaii", a film destruction of James Michener's behemoth novel, depicted a memorable scene where a man, distraught over his wife's untimely death, mashed his teeth out on island rock.
If you see this scene, don't count on shaking it any time soon.

There is a sketch line to denote the "old" shoreline. Aral Sea, 2009

In 1960, the Aral Sea, at 26,250 sq. mi. was the fourth largest lake in the world. Located in the Central Asia desert, southern Kazakhstan and northern Uzbekistan, in the '60's it was part of the Soviet Union along with all the other 'stans except Afghani.

The Soviets determined to turn the desert green, and grow mostly cotton.

So they began using the Anu Darya, the Oxus of antiquity, a 1500 mile long river feeding from the south, and the Syr Darya, 1370 miles long and flowing into the northeast area of the Aral.

The project was a success, but at a price.

Well, prices, actually. Cotton is a very demanding plant, and desert soils gave up their nutrients quickly, leaving, largely, salt and sand. And lengths of the canals are not sealed, and as much as 60% of the water diverted for irrigation is lost in transit. What little remains of the Aral is heavily polluted from weapons testing, including bio-weapons, industrial activities, pesticides, and fertilizer runoff.

In 1948, a top-secret laboratory was established by the Soviets on an island in the center of the Aral Sea. The base was abandoned in 1992. Scientific expeditions proved that this had been a site for production, testing and later dumping of pathogenic weapons. In 2002, through a project organized by the US and with Uzbeki assistance, 10 anthrax burial sites were decontaminated.

The loss of such a large body of water has caused local climate change, with shorter, hotter summers and longer, hotter winters reported.

There are proposed plans and project to undo this nightmare, but there are local problems - for instance, Uzbekistan is one of the world's leading cotton producers, and the necessary closing of the irrigation canals would demolish that nation's economy.

Driving to a favorite walking space this morning, I passed over the Mississinewa River at Jalapa, site of a ford (to the battlefield, but not for that purpose) and an early mill and store. By habit I check the river as I pass over it, and to the south was a most unexpected treat. In a pool about fifty yards upstream were four Great Blue Herons and four Great Egrets. I have never seen one of either from this bridge, in either direction. Fishing must have been good.

The first four red tails I saw were perched in trees, well away from the road. Heading home across Red Bridge there was a deer just around the curve. She stood and looked at us as Abbe tried to pass through the glass. While theoretically possible, it wasn't happening this morning.

On around this curve, a red tail came up out of the berm grass, without prey, and lit on the nearest powerpole. An eighth-mile on, at the intersection, another red tail perched just past the crossroad. I have seen a pair in the area for several weeks, and they are old, if distant, friends.

I haven't noticed any Indigo Buntings, or Eastern Bluebirds, lately. Better slow down.

There are American Goldfinches, though, still resplendent. They are also beginning to flock. According to Kaufman's "Lives of North American Birds" they are late nesters, midsummer, July and August, perhaps to capitalize on the late summer seed crop to feed the young. They are solitary during breeding season.

Yesterday evening I saw a hawk on a wire, unsteady, and the first I have seen on a wire. I expected it to be a pretty easy ID and didn't give it much study. According to Brian Wheeler, "Raptors of Eastern North America", every species of hawk found in Indiana uses utility wires, except two: both accipiters, the Sharp-shinned Hawk and the Northern Goshawk.

Another "easy" ID in the UNK (unknown) pile.

Yesterday I saw a Belted Kingfisher on a wire at a bridge over a ditch. Big surprise. I was totally unprepared for this wonderful bird in this place.

I do not know internet copyright law, but will assume that if I can download it, I can post it.
Thus my first effort to add a Public Domain photo, so enjoy, darnit!

Should you see a kingfisher and wonder, it is Ceryle alcyon, the Belted Kingfisher, unless you are in deepest Texas or Mexico, your kingfisher is of the Belted variety, and is most easily distinguished from the other two (Ringed and Green, for the record).

The US Supreme Court did not issue a definition of pornography, instead opining "I know it when I see it". Such is the Belted Kingfisher.

Sibley says our kingfishers are large, conspicuous, and loud. They are found on open water (as in not iced over), perch prominently, and hover frequently. They are very large-headed with long, heavy bill and short tail, and very short legs. They use wires and trees for lookout perches and catch fish by plunge-diving, head-first. Kaufman adds nothing. National Geographic "Complete Birds of North America" mentions that a distinct rufous band on the female's belly, extending down the flanks. And the birds require clear water to succeed. Not crystal, bud not covered.

You are now fully equipped to pursue and enjoy one of America's most beautiful birds.

But wait! Let's try to download some more Public Domain photos!

Okay this isn't the format I had in mind. I will try to fix it, but if I can't, enjoy anyway.

Caught some Lassie this afternoon, one of the sucky ones, with the sniveling, whiny Timmy.
Who would have thought that there could be worse than the arrogant, wooden Jeff?
Lassie did a huge disservice to Collies. Collies are wonderful dogs, superb companions. Unlike the TV show, they are not usually the smartest member of the family. None benefit from a scriptwriter, and tend not to save lives on a weekly basis.
The show ran for 18 1/2 years, and featured at least 16 Lassies, all male, all with that distinctive white stripe on the face, which some people don't particularly favor. The "Official" Lassie website says all Lassies are from successive generations, and the latest and greatest Lassie is from the tenth, but I think this sample is much too small to cover the timespan.

Many people do not seek pure breed dogs, for reasons good and bad.
A very good reason is millions of unwanted family members, dogs and cats, are killed at shelters annually. The best guess, from several searches, is that there are between six and eight million dogs and cats given up every year, and half are destroyed. Okay, the term is "euthanized", like there is a good way to do it, but that's bullshit. These "pets" are slaughtered, horribly. A widespread method is decompression, which causes your pet to explode from the inside.
Three to four million is too many, way too many, and I very much approve of and totally respect those who choose to reduce this horrifying total through adoption.
These wonderful people tend to disprove of and otherwise reject breed dogs.
A concern for many is puppy mills, nearly as disgusting as the sickening process of poultry production, but much more repulsive, as puppies are more photogenic than chickens.
I have seen a puppy mill, just to the east of Monterey, in the very north of Pulaski Co. IN.
The sight is indescribable.
There is law effected since that should have closed this operation, but I don't yet know if it has.

The case for breed dogs is simple, really. With some research, anyone can select the puppy or dog that suits him or her. The 19th edition of the American Kennel Club's The Complete Book of Dogs describes the conformation, characteristics, and behavior of 146 breeds.
With little diligence anyone can find the perfect canine companion. Ideal breeds are available for all. And careful selection would significantly reduce the number of unwanted pets dumped at shelters.

One line of oft-repeated crap from "those in the know" is that bench-show dogs are "high strung", "overbred". Absurd. Demeanor is second only to conformation. High strung dogs are not well-bred dogs. Check the breed descriptions and choose your dog.
If you choose a Dalmatian, know that the dog is bred to walk 20 to 30 miles every day, and, unless you are a distance runner, you can't possibly meet that need for exercise. The Dalmatian is a Coach Dog, and you don't have a coach. Every damned Disney movie places thousands of these beautiful canines in family situations where they must surely fail.
If you choose a St. Bernard, know they are huge, they drool, they are far from lethargic, and they have a nasty side. When any of this happens in your home, you will find a place out-of-doors, often on a chain, but the dog is not to blame. It's breeding.
The Sporting Group, one of seven AKC groups (the others: non-sporting, herding, working, terrier, hound, and toy. A miscellaneous group has been added: proceed with utmost caution) are among the most striking and distinctive of all. The setters, the most docile, require an hour each day of strenuous exercise, while others in the Group are indefatigable.
The Einstein of the canine world, the Border Collie, requires challenge and stimulation every waking moment, so, unless you have 6-8 hours to make fun for your Border Collie, or you are a sheep or goat rancher, let them thrive elsewhere.
And, unless you have very understanding neighbors, near and far, stay away from the hounds.
The Basenji is silent, but I saw one bite his handler, and that is a stop sign.
I once saw a St. Bernard knock his handler down, not playfully but aggressively, so, again, this wonderful, beautiful dog fits maybe one home in two hundred, unless there are children, when the viability becomes zero in three thousand.

One other Lassie tragedy is human perception. A few years ago, I had a big, beautiful, blonde Golden Retriever and a quite wonderful collie, and kids in the neighborhood always wanted to play with the Lassie dog, who was not in the least interested. My golden, on the other hand, would fetch tennis balls until your arm fell off.
By all means, get a dog, or another. But do your homework. A mistake may inconvenience you for a few weeks or months, but if it doesn't work out, that dog has about a 50% chance of surviving a trip to the shelter.
And the fault isn't the dog's, who didn't choose you.

Okay, here's something a little more contemporary from psycho rocker Ted Nugent:
"Obama, he's a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun...Hey Hillary [Clinton] you might want to ride one of these [machine guns] into the sunset, you worthless bitch."
and
"Apartheid isn't that cut and dry. All men are not created equal".
Well, okay, whatever the hell that means. Although I was wrong. Nuge is on the Board of Directors, but has yet to be president of the NRA. To his supporters, it is a dead heat, whether he'll be President of the USA or of the NRA.
By the way, if you go to the NRA website,

http://dataservices.nranews.com/svc/nra_classic


the lead (only) article is by Wayne LaPierre, who is the actual leader, disguised as an Executive Vice President. The President is either Ronald Schmeits (Wikipedia) or Kayne Robinson (NRA Website). Robinson would be the third president this year, as Schmeits replaced John Sigler.
Doesn't matter. See "LaPierre, Wayne".
And who could possibly give a wet crap about Sarah! the Quitter Palin? Why, the NRA, of course!


Governor Palin Honored With NRA’s Gold Medial Award of Merit & Benefactor Life Membership
Monday, August 03, 2009
ANCHORAGE, AK- Sarah Palin is back, almost a week since she stepped out of the spotlight.
Governor Palin gave a speech on 2nd Amendment rights at a banquet in Anchorage.
The Saturday night event capped a 4-day National Rifle Association seminar hosted by the Alaska Gun Collectors Association.
NRA director Wayne Anthony Ross, president of the gun collectors' group, says Palin attended the dinner with her husband, Todd. Ross says about 130 people attended the event.
Gun collectors groups from outside the state presented Palin with lifetime memberships. She also received the NRA's Gold Medal Award of Merit for the Promotion of Gun Collecting.
An avid defender of our 2nd Amendment rights, Sarah Palin spoke about Big Government intrusion and the importance of being vigilant in protecting our right to bear arms.
A star-studded banquet concluded the events of the NRA's XVIII Gun Collectors Seminar in Anchorage, Alaska on Saturday night, August 1, 2009.
Luminaries such as NRA President Ronald Schmeits and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre attended the four-day seminar in downtown Anchorage. The seminar was hosted by Gun Collectors Committee Chairman Wayne Anthony Ross and the members of the Alaska Gun Collectors Association.
Seminar activities included sessions on World War II in Alaska as well as the life of the common soldier of the American revolution and culminated Saturday evening with a visit from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin who gave a stirring speech on 2nd Amendment rights. Following the speech she was presented with Life Memberships in The Missouri Valley Arms Collectors Association, Ohio Gun Collectors Association and the Dallas Arms Collectors Association. The members of the Missouri Valley Arms Collectors Association also presented Gov. Palin with an NRA Benefactor Life Membership as well. She was also presented with the NRA's Gold Medal Award of Merit for the Promotion of Gun Collecting. This is only the second time in 10 years the award has been presented on behalf of the NRA's Gun Collectors Committee.

This was culled from a Sarah! website

http://governorpalin4president.blogspot.com/2009/08/sarah-palin-honored-with-nras-gold.html


Should you go, prepare to stay awhile. There are a lot of links to sites run by some no doubt fascinating people.
So why is she "Governor" Palin? She quit. Isn't "Governor" an honorific for those who at least tried to do the job?
Here is the link for the NRA's "enemies list"


http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=15


Given the body of work of some of these people, it seems a damn shame to boycott them on a single issue.
Such is the NRA.
Okay, I really, really, really want to be on the enemies list. Woe that I am insignificant...

As everyone knows, Tuesday is Science Day at The New York Times, and yesterday there was an article reporting findings that a dog's coat, a significant factor in breeding and a distinctive feature of many of the 146 breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club, and possibly a hundred others, is controlled by three genes. Three. See

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/science/01obdogs.html?_r=1&ref=science

An interesting thing is one of the oldest pure breed dogs, the Afghan hound, doesn't conform.
Ever wonder what that "Afghan" refers to? I hadn't.
But it explains the dearth of records for the dog.
The first appearance or notice of the breed in the Western world, from an unmistakable picture in some copies of a collection of letters from 1809 India, was published in England in 1813. Claims the breed can be traced back 4000 years, to Egypt, are unsubstantiated, but a genereader will surely find out, when piqued.
It is a bit odd the Afghan hound, with that luxurious coat (although they are goofy: a friend who owned one said you could never be sure when you opened the door whether the dog would be lying on the couch or sitting on the refrigerator - so Afghani) is exempt from this genealogical expression. Have fun guessing why.

So I don't lose the thread of this blog, here's some bird stuff: there was a red tail on a post just out of town south this morning, a first, and I wanted to take a slower look, but a moron was on my bumper, one of those alleged "people" who would rather follow by inches than pass.
I used to carry a selection of golf balls to deal with this, but there is no place for them in my little truck.

More bird stuff later. And the end of the NRA stuff, unless they should threaten me with the "enemies list"... oh, please... The Who, Magic Bus, "I want it I want it I want it"...
Be kind and spare me the next line.

One more for Nuge: it's "cut and dried", you submoronic sack of vomit. "Cut and dried" as in making hay, as in it's finished, made, ready for bailing, which is work, a term, concept, reality your mangy ass has never had to face.

The wonderful and learned scholar Olivia Judson, who is everything I am not, has a superb post at The New York Times

http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/the-fantasy-genome-project/?8au&emc=au

An irony: this article features the coelacanth, referenced on this page earlier in the week.
Should you unwisely choose not read to Olivia's article, here is something I found amazing.
The coeleacanth, long thought to be extinct for 70 million years, resurfaced (literally) in 1934, when one was caught along the South African coast. They have since been caught near Indonesia.
What stupefies me is they are two different species.
Veritable living fossils, and yet different species.
The human footprint is so large, it's a wonder we can jump.
And maybe we should never walk.
For a reason obviously of much help, my blog toolbar has changed and no longer has a spellchecker. A curse for the 21st Century. Makes me review all those "pass this on or else!" e-mails I trashed.