Nice blacktails

A friend called the other day to tell me that a pretty big buck was shot near my place. I was hoping it wasn't the one I've been seeing on the game cameras well inside my property. After comparing the photos, it looks like they are different animals.. Then I find out the harvested buck was actually shot several miles away.

Dr Who and the TARDIS

For a little fun for all you Dr Who fans (you know Who you are), enter the Tardis courtesy of the BBC:  

• Enter The Doctor’s TARDIS and share the adventure

A tip of the hat to: Random Ramblings blog: Another fan of honey bees.

http://kloggers-randomramblings.blogspot.com/

Honey bee decline

The following very interesting study was done in 2007-08. CCD is a world wide problem that pretty much everybody has heard of by now.  

You can draw your own conclusions as to its' cause, but the science here makes it pretty clear to me that while there are multiple possible causes, chemical contaminants play a large part. This is interesting to me as I have had the company of two feral hives living in the walls of both my barn and my farmhouse for many years. They have always been healthy colonies and I suspect it is because they have always had plenty of wildflowers for nectar and pollen, and haven't been near any agricultural chemicals. I now have a hive I can inspect, housed in a Langstroth box. We'll see if they do as well as the other two feral hives. It will be nice to finally be able to harvest some of our own honey. 

Background

Recent declines in honey bees for crop pollination threaten fruit, nut, vegetable and seed production in the United States. A broad survey of pesticide residues was conducted on samples from migratory and other beekeepers across 23 states, one Canadian province and several agricultural cropping systems during the 2007–08 growing seasons.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We have used LC/MS-MS and GC/MS to analyze bees and hive matrices for pesticide residues utilizing a modified QuEChERS method. We have found 121 different pesticides and metabolites within 887 wax, pollen, bee and associated hive samples. Almost 60% of the 259 wax and 350 pollen samples contained at least one systemic pesticide, and over 47% had both in-hive acaricides fluvalinate and coumaphos, and chlorothalonil, a widely-used fungicide. In bee pollen were found chlorothalonil at levels up to 99 ppm and the insecticides aldicarb, carbaryl, chlorpyrifos and imidacloprid, fungicides boscalid, captan and myclobutanil, and herbicide pendimethalin at 1 ppm levels. Almost all comb and foundation wax samples (98%) were contaminated with up to 204 and 94 ppm, respectively, of fluvalinate and coumaphos, and lower amounts of amitraz degradates and chlorothalonil, with an average of 6 pesticide detections per sample and a high of 39. There were fewer pesticides found in adults and brood except for those linked with bee kills by permethrin (20 ppm) and fipronil (3.1 ppm).

Conclusions/Significance

The 98 pesticides and metabolites detected in mixtures up to 214 ppm in bee pollen alone represents a remarkably high level for toxicants in the brood and adult food of this primary pollinator. This represents over half of the maximum individual pesticide incidences ever reported for apiaries. While exposure to many of these neurotoxicants elicits acute and sublethal reductions in honey bee fitness, the effects of these materials in combinations and their direct association with CCD or declining bee health remains to be determined.

You can read the entire study here: 

Below is a healthy swarm from the hive in my barn's wall. This occurs yearly. I will capture the next swarm.

The house bees swarming.

At long last a post!

I have been lax at posting. Here is some filler shamelessly lifted from the News of the Weird, while I try to get some of my own news together:

Here is something I’ve had a lot of success growing when I lived in Florida!

* Extract of cockroach is a delicacy among some Chinese, able to
miraculously  reduce inflammation, defy aging, and cure
tuberculosis, cancer, and cirrhosis.  Agence France-Presse reported
in August that Yunnan province is a silicon-valley-type business
center, where pulverized roaches can sell for the equivalent of about
$89 a pound, and five pharmaceutical companies have contracts
with ranches that have formed the Sichuan Treasure Cockroach
Cooperative.  (In August, a start-up farm in Jiangsu province was,
police suspect, vandalized, allowing at least a million cockroaches
being prepared for market to flee to adjacent neighborhoods.)
[Quartz (qz.com), 8-27-2013] [Agence France-Presse via Daily
Telegraph (London), 8-25-2013]
It would work for me!

* When entrepreneur Michelle Esquenazi was asked by a New York
Post reporter in September why her all-female crew of licensed
bounty hunters (Empire Bail Bonds of New York) is so successful
at tricking bail-jumpers into the open, she offered a five-letter
vulgar euphemism for a female body part.  "It's timeless," she
continued.  "Of course he's going to open his door for a nice piece
of [deleted]."   "The thing about defendants is no matter who they
are [of whatever color], they're all dumb.  Every single last one of
them is stupid."  [New York Post, 9-27-2013]
]
The lawyer always wins!
* It's expensive to go broke in America.  Detroit, which most
acknowledge acted wisely in filing for bankruptcy protection in July
(in the face of debts estimated to be at least $18 billion), will
nonetheless be on the hook for bankruptcy-law fees that could total
$60 million under current contracts (according to an October New
York Times report), plus various expenses, such as the $250,000 to
Christie's auction house to price and sell some assets.  A fee
examiner has been hired to keep the expenses in line, but he charges
$600 an hour. [New York Times, 10-8-2013]

Medical Marvels Oh the horror!
*  A recent medical journal reported that a 49-year-old
man in Brazil said he had recovered from a stroke except that the
damage to his brain (in a "subcortical region" associated with
higher-level thinking) has caused him to develop "pathological
generosity" toward others.  A Duke University neurologist told
London's Daily Mail that stroke-induced personality changes (such
as hoarding) are common but that this particular change appears
unique.  Doctors reported in the journal Neurocase that even with
medication, this patient's beneficence was unabated after two years.
[Daily Mail (London), 9-7-2013]
Perspective
* Americans frequently cite the rigorous, above-board testing of
prescription drugs as one of government's most important functions,
and health insurance companies use such seals of approval in
policy-coverage decisions.  However, some consumers seem to
prefer unorthodox, untested, unregulated products and, backed by
lobbyists for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), are
challenging the insurers for "discriminat[ing]" against these
"drugs," especially in the game-changing rules of the new
Affordable Care Act.   A Forbes.com columnist explained in August
what would happen if CAM prevails:  "You could start offering
dried bird poop for arthritis, call it  avian nature therapy,' and if an
insurer won't pay for it, you can sue." [Forbes.com, 8-26-2013]

From: http://www.WeirdUniverse.net

Islam, Not so facial hair friendly after all! The Dali camel?

Malik Amir Muhammad Khan Afridi is a Businessman from Pakistan, who is facing troubles for his long mustache. Recently he was kidnapped by Islamists over his 30 inch long mustache and was held in a cave for a month until he shaved.  Terrorists threatened to kill him if he didn't shave.

Malik Amir Mohammad Khan Afridi and his Moustache

Malik Amir Muhammad Khan Afridi, 48 years old and the father of 10 children has now requested Britain to grant asylum as he faces life threat in Pakistan. He has now grown it back, vowing never to be bowed by the terrorists again despite death threats and kidnapping by Islamic extremists.

According to Afridi this has been his identity since the age of 22. He says,  ’I don’t like smoking. I’m not fond of snuff, or drinking. This is the only choice in my life. I’d even sacrifice food, but not the mustache. It’s my life. It’s not part of my life. It is my life.

Moreover it is not cheap to maintain such a big mustache . He has to spend over ₹ 10,000 every month in order to maintain it. He spends 30 minutes  daily tending to his flowing mustache.

His Mustache gave him a popularity, but this also earned wrath of Islamic Extremist Groups. A group called Lashkar-e-Islam, which controlled swathes of the Kyber district of Parkistan, near the border with Afghanistan had decreed that mustaches and beards must be shaved or trimmed short.

Lashkar-e-Islam demanded protection money from him and upon refusal he was kidnapped and locked in a cave for 30 days until he shaved off his mustache.

He however has grown it back and moved to Faisalabad when he started getting threats of kidnapping again and now has applied for asylum to British Government.

 From the Bihar news

We borrow it from our Children

From the BBC, a politician that ours could well advised to learn from.

"It's a common grumble that politicians' lifestyles are far removed from those of their electorate. Not so in Uruguay. Meet the president - who lives on a ramshackle farm and gives away most of his pay.

Laundry is strung outside the house. The water comes from a well in a yard, overgrown with weeds. Only two police officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, keep watch outside.

This is the residence of the president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whose lifestyle clearly differs sharply from that of most other world leaders.

President Mujica has shunned the luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to stay at his wife's farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo.

The president and his wife work the land themselves, growing flowers.

Ten days ago, the lower house of Uruguay's parliament passed a law legalizing marijuana, reflecting a growing sentiment in Latin America that the current prohibition on drugs should change. 

"But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left?

"Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet."

Mujica accuses most world leaders of having a "blind obsession to achieve growth with consumption, as if the contrary would mean the end of the world"."

----------------------------------------

Whether or not climate change is caused by man, or is just a normal cycle is irrelevant. Either way, I do believe that we contribute to it. The real problem is man's overpopulation, which feeds the utter disrespect by the majority, to our environment and the world's ecology in general. The days of safaris and the unchecked hunting of Africa's game has depleted and brought them close to extinction. Those that are left are being slaughtered for food and folk medicine by the hungry and greedy respectively. The dried hair from rhino horns bringing $1,400/oz in Viet Nam.

The rain forests are being cut down. The old growth forests here in Oregon with the exception of a few protected acres have been cut and re-planted as tree farms. These forests are not the same , if and when they are replanted. Countless thousands of species do not survive in the interim and what results is a forest that is a ghost of it's former self.

The cities are expanding and all those roofs and pavements collect toxic water. This water unfiltered by the earth, then runs unchecked through the storm drains daily, by the billions of gallons and drains directly into and pollutes the oceans.

Wherever man has reached a certain critical population, he has tended to do so at great cost to the earth's, and his children's future. The days of being fruitful and multiplying are past. The earth has only so much room, and while maybe not as fragile as any one particular species that may go extinct on any given day because of man, all of the earth's biota is interconnected and interdependent.

The twenty acres I once lived on far (I thought) from the city, in Florida, are now surrounded by developments and the small two lane country road has become a six lane highway.

The problem cannot be solved simply by carbon credits, electric cars wind generators and such. The problem is that there are too many of us. I do not know what the solution is. But, if we haven't reached a critical mass yet, we soon will, and I do believe that our growth rate is unsustainable.

OK. Rant over. Now I can go back to putting the second coat of paint on my farmhouse. Actually, the second it has had in it's entire life of at least 100 years.

We do not inherit the world from our Ancestors----We borrow it from our Children. (Kenyan Proverb)

Somewhat similar happened to me once

2 Mexican teens: Van sold by US gov't had cocaine

"MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican family says that a van bought at a U.S. government auction came with an unwanted extra: an undiscovered package of cocaine beneath the dashboard.

Sergio Torres Duarte, 18, and his 19-year-old friend Julio Cesar Moreno were driving to a soccer match in November when they stopped at a routine police highway checkpoint near the Pacific Coast resort city of Mazatlan. They say they were stunned when officers discovered a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of cocaine beneath the dashboard of their blue 2004 Toyota Sienna. Eight months later, they are still in jail fighting drug trafficking charges." Not a coincidence that that the same markings were found on the packages of drugs found in the car by US customs in 2011 before they sold the car.

------------------------------------

I once bought an IH Travalall for some parts for around $100.00. I bought the car from a guy who bought it at a customs auction for the motor, which he pulled before selling it to me. The headliner and door panels were torn out and the car had obviously been searched. For some reason I thought to pull up the carpet under the front seat and see if anything was under it, as it did not look disturbed. Beneath it was an old worn and stained envelope filled with cash. Obviously some past owner's emergency gas or tow money. Not a fortune, but it did cover what I paid for the car!