Competition for our Resident Killer

This adult Sharp-shinned Hawk stopped in today. Must have heard about the haut cuisine.

Our Resident Killing Machine

COOPER'S HAWK

She's been around for the last few weeks now. Striking terror in the hearts and minds of the winter songbirds.

Happy Halloween

Toothy, seen below, has a lot of respect for the big boys!

The Zojirushi Bread Machine

Bread machines have much improved in the past 10 years. I guess it was about 10 years ago that I bought my first one. It was more a novelty than practical. I made quite a few loaves with it but would never think of bringing the loaf out for guests.
The one that Best Wife just got for me makes loaves that I can be proud of showing off for company.

Here is a 2 pound wheat loaf. I loaded the ingredients the night before, pressed start in the morning, and the bread finished baking just a few minutes before dinner time.

...chronic weak governance, worsening security, and a resurgent Taliban...Afghanistan to collapse...into a "failed state."

By Scott Peterson Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

KABUL – Few ever dared dream that Afghanistan, five years after US forces toppled the Taliban, would be Utopia.

But few, also, would have predicted that chronic weak governance, worsening security, and a resurgent Taliban would prompt senior US officials to warn against allowing Afghanistan to collapse again into a “failed state.”

Wait a sec...
Wasn't Afghanistan the Great success story? The one Bright Spot in our war against terror? Proof that Shrub and Stutter were geniuses on foreign policy, military strategy, exporting democracy, watermelon seed spitting, and general BSing?
Well, no wonder – those damn Senate retards refused, I mean fa-lat Rrre-fe-used to support Bush’s WAR ON TERRA. What were they thinking?

Go figure.

Hiking Wimps

I know that not everyone who's reached that late middle age range of 60+ yearns to hoist a pack to their back and set out for a nice two week jaunt into the so-called wilderness. (So-called because there are too few real wildernesses in the world. I'll settle for a nice remote trail at least three miles from anything else man made.)

Where was I? (Digression would be my middle name if it wasn't so long and ugly.) Anyway best wife and I will escape most of the insanity that accompanies so-called civilization. (S0 called because... all right, all right, I'll let it go!) No traffic, no boss, no TV, no Internet, no Blogs, no radio, and hopefull no cell-phones. I'll have to narrowly define traffic to SUVs, autos, and such because I expect there to be some significant foot traffic. So wilderness, even near wilderness, it ain't.

I'll admit that it would take me a couple of months to plan, equip, and get in shape for a 2 week backpacking trip. It's been more than 5 years since the last time I did one. So this three day scheduled hike in New Hampshire's White Mountains is a simple thing. No sleeping bag on a hard tent floor - we'll sleep in comfort in a cabin on the mountain. No tastless one-pot meals - at the AMC Zeeland Falls Hut, meals are brought to our table.

Resident Hummer & His Friend Biggy Worm

We interrupt with a special news bulletin:
Biggy Worm, our future Monarch, has gone missing! Hummer is distraught.
When we asked Missy, our resident sleuth, for a comment she insisted, "I didn't do it".
Anyone with information is urged to come forward.

The Naked Truth or how we've been lied to!

A half century ago I was taught that Pluto was a real planet. A real honest to gosh heavenly body of orbital persuasion. Lies all lies! The truth is finally out. Pluto doesn't even have enough mass to be round. Even our Earth's lowly moon can pass that test. So out it goes, Cast into the Dustbin of History.
All joking aside, the International Astronomical Union's, secret committee intent on elevating many more planettes to planet status must have been dredged up from scientist wannabes. What were they thinking! (We might need a new definition of thinking.) It's revealing that more than 95% of the astronomers didn't take part in the voting for a definition of a planet. A definition, it should be noted, that is limited to planets in our solar system.

Today's Trivia

I find the Subaru logo interesting and today came across some Subaru trivia. Well for many of us it's trivia but for Subaru I suppose it's of high importance.

OK! Notice the six stars. The Japanese name for the Pleiades star cluster is Subaru!

OK! Notice one star is much larger than the other five. In 1953, five companies merged to form Fuji Heavy Industries, Ltd. which makes, among other things, the Subaru automobile.

OK! For you budding astronomers out there, the star cluster has another common name. The Seven Sisters for Asterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygete, Celaeno and Alcyone. The cluster's nine brightest stars include the sisters' parents, Atlas and Pleione
So, for the fuzzy count, you'll just have to chalk it up to artistic license.

Pleiades Mythology and other Information

No, I'm not buying a Subaru or any other car for that matter. But, my wife - who just bought a Honda Accord a few months ago - has decided the Honda isn't comfortable enough for long distance trips. We just drove out to Minnesota and back. She laments the loss of her Ford Explorer, Trusty, (thirsty would be more like it) that was traded for the Honda and believes there is an SUV out there that combines comfort and high mileage for under $40 grand. (She also believes in her imaginary friend, Humpfull Head!)

And it Smells Better than Pig Shit!

Mr. Gärtner’s 69-year-old father, Heinrich, feeding the pigs on the farm...

Hot German July Doesn’t Faze Farmer Who Reaps the Sun

By MARK LANDLER
Published: July 28, 2006

BUTTENWIESEN, Germany, July 25 — Surely Heiner Gärtner is one of the only farmers in Germany, if not most of Europe, who greets the dawn of yet another cloudless day with anticipation rather than angst.

As Germany sizzles through what is expected to be its hottest July on record, crops are shriveling and farmers are growing desperate. Some have petitioned the European Union to allow sheep and cattle to graze on land normally off limits, because their own fields are scorched.
Here on Mr. Gärtner’s 200-acre farm, however, the fields are covered with 10,050 solar panels, which soak up the sunshine and convert it into electricity. The ambient hum in the air is not the sound of insects but of transformers carrying a high-voltage current to the villages nearby.

“We’ve had so much sun,” said Mr. Gärtner, 34, a wide-brimmed hat shielding his face from the rays. “It would be better if we could have this much sun with less heat. But you can’t have everything.”

Extreme heat actually reduces the efficiency of the solar panels, he said, pointing to a dial that showed the plant was running at 83 percent of its capacity. On cooler days, the panels operate at full capacity.

Even so, this is shaping up as a thriving summer for Mr. Gärtner — vindicating his decision in 2003 to turn this 150-year-old pig farm into a small-scale electricity plant. Switching from pigs to power saved his family’s enterprise, which was teetering on the edge of economic ruin.
“I couldn’t repair the roof if I only bred pigs,” said Mr. Gärtner, a self-confident fellow with a spiel that is far more entrepreneurial than agricultural. “We have to compete worldwide these days. Pork from Brazil costs half as much as German pork. Our costs are simply too high.”
When Mr. Gärtner took over the farm from his father in 2002, his options seemed few and dismal. He considered selling most of the property and keeping only his family’s stone house — a last vestige of the farm started by his great-grandfather, who kept cattle, chickens and other animals.

But there were few buyers, even for a farm that is fairly large by southern German standards and blessed with broad, flat meadows amid the gently rolling countryside of Bavaria. Farms in eastern Germany and Poland are much larger and therefore more economically viable.

Although the recent collapse in global negotiations over tariffs, farm subsidies and other barriers at the World Trade Organization may protect European farmers awhile longer, Bavaria has long promoted its high-technology industry over agriculture. “Germany is an industrial country, not an agricultural country,” Mr. Gärtner said. “We’re on the wrong end.”

Visiting a classmate in northern Germany after graduating from college with a degree in agricultural engineering, Mr. Gärtner was struck by the windmills that dot the countryside there. His father had already experimented with making biodiesel fuel out of rapeseed — even running a Volkswagen with it — so the concept of renewable energy was not alien to him.

Europe, seeking to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, has encouraged the development of alternative energy by offering hefty subsidies for people to put up windmills on their property. Germany’s wind-power industry is the world’s largest, yet growth here has slowed as people have begun to protest the proliferation of these giant propellers near their homes.

Bavaria, with its inland location, lacks the coastal breezes that turn windmills. But it gets more sunshine than other parts of Germany. Moreover, the Gärtner farm, which is known as Maierhof, has an especially sunny location, with southern exposure and few hills to block the light.

In 2004, Germany passed a new law that guaranteed people who built solar parks a minimum price for each kilowatt of electricity that was two to three times the market price.

That prompted Mr. Gärtner to investigate the possibility of turning his fields of corn, wheat and barley into rows of photovoltaic panels. With a lack of solar experts in Germany, he and his classmate, Ove Petersen, taught themselves the technology (they are now partners in the venture).

The hardest part, he said, was obtaining loans to finance the roughly $5 million in construction costs. Mr. Gärtner also had to persuade the mayor of Buttenwiesen to allow him to string power lines across the fields. With only a handful of farmers in Germany installing these panels on a large scale, “people really had no idea what we were talking about,” he said.

The project is a family affair. Mr. Gärtner recruited his sister, Annette, who is an architect in the nearby city of Augsburg, to design the complex. His 69-year-old father, Heinrich, provides moral support, keeping an eye on the dials when he is not feeding the fish in his pond.

When his panels run at full capacity, Mr. Gärtner figures the farm could supply power to all 7,000 residents of the village. The utility that buys his electricity, however, uses it to meet demand at peak periods, like during this heat wave, when air-conditioners are running full blast.

Mr. Gärtner makes more than $600,000 a year from the sale of this electricity, which will allow him to pay off his loans in 15 to 16 years. That is good for him, because the government is phasing out the preferential prices over the next decade. The Mercedes parked in his farmyard attests to his success.

As he sees it, his farm is merely adapting to an economic cycle that happens to favor a different sort of energy.

“Animals are energy too; they create food for people,” Mr. Gärtner said. “At the moment, power is more profitable than food. That may not always be the case. You have to be flexible.”

To hedge his bets, Mr. Gärtner has held on to his 1,000 pigs. The other day, they were huddled in a shed, sleeping through the searing heat. With the world’s population expanding, he believes, the price of pork may someday rebound enough to make it a viable business again.

In the meantime, the pigs serve another purpose: Mr. Gärtner uses their waste to fuel a biogas plant, which also generates electricity. “One of the criticisms of solar energy is that it is unpredictable because the sun doesn’t always shine,” he said. “This is completely predictable.”

Heiner Gärtner saved the family farm by turning it into a solar electricity plant, with 10,050 solar panels.

From the Land of Sky Blue Waters

From the land of sky blue waters... I think that could be a line from H.W. Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. If not, at least it's a line from a Hamms beer commercial.
We just got back from Ortonville, Minnesota and environs. Family things. Tykes. Hugs. Reunion. Food. Cousins. Estate. More food. ...Comes the Beer Refreshing... Enjoyable things.

If you go there be sure to have breakfast at the Hilltop Theatre of Seasons restaurant. The Hwy #12 - Four Egg, Ham, Mushrooms, Hashbrowns, and Cheese Special is not to be missed. Then if you can still walk, go accross US Hwy #12 to the Big Stone County Museum. An hour or two there is a must do. Everything from Paul Bunyon's anchor to one of the largest collections of bird/wildlife displays in the United States.

More to follow, now I must see to the Honey Do List!

My Fair Share of Abuse

OK, back from the first half of my vacation. Outer Banks had sunny, dry weather and I didn't have to clean any fish.
We have just enough time to unpack, wash dirty clothes, mow the lawn, repack clean clothes, and set out for Minnesota and the second half of vacation.
Meanwhile, as I sit here waiting for someone to unpack, wash clothes, mow lawn, etc., etc... I thought I'd catch up on the political cartoons and get my fair share of abuse! (lyrics)

Hoo-Rah! No Fish to Clean!

I'm back from my attempt to convice fish to commit suicide. There wern't any takers. Ah well, what's that old saw? "A lousy day at fishing is still better than a good day at the office!" At least I didn't pay $8.00 to stand on the fishing pier and not catch anything. It's about 100 yards from where I was not catching anything.

One old flabby tourist (he was older and flabbier than moi!) with a smart alec, "Slim pickin's?", was put in his place with my smart alec rejoinder, "No, I just didn't want to clean any!"

Yesterday, we took the Sea Eagle out for it's first voyage of the season. Sea Eagle is quite a handle for a 16 ft double pontoon craft that fits in the trunk of the car. OK, go ahead and laugh but it SCREAMS with our powerful 1 pony Minkota! If only the bay had more than a foot of water in it.

Outer Banks, North Carolina Vacation

Well... vacation is here and now. I guess it's Sunday because I worked Friday and we drove Saturday. I'm on "Don't-give-a-shit-what-time-or-day-it-is" time.

Walked down to the beach this afternoon to fly the kites but, not enough breeze. Luckily I brought the camera with me so I played with it. Here are a few shots of the Surf Nymphs.

As nymphs so often do, there were one or two grown up ones near by as well. They were a little bit more elusive but...

...I managed.

Happy Birthday USA!

How's that again?

In an effort to throw good money after bad:
ORLANDO, Fla. - An overwhelming majority of delegates from the nation's largest education union approved a plan Monday to aggressively lobby Congress for reform of the No Child Left Behind Act - REFORM, FORM, RE, FORMRE, MROFER

Did you get all that? There will be a test!
Did You Zone Out?

Who threw that?

Well anyway:
Doomsday

Just a Test

I Let My Baby Do That!