Bicknell's Thrush goes to court

A Vermont green group is going to sue the US Forest Service on behalf of Bicknell's Thrush.  They claim the Forest Service isn't doing enough to protect this endangered species. 
   Bicknell's Thrush didn't even exist before 1995.  Up until 1995 thrushes were thrushes, just an ordinary songbird.  Somehow in 1995, thrush lovers managed to get Bicknell's Thrush declared a separate species, different in some way from just plain thrushes.  The differences are minute, a bird watcher's website warns that Bicknell's Thrush is difficult to distinguish in the field.   Anyhow the thrush lovers managed to get Bicknell's Thrush declared an endangered species shortly after getting it declared a species. 
   Bicknell's Thrush was immediately put to work slowing down skiing at Mittersill.  The Forest Service managed to postpone the re opening of the old Mittersill ski trails for many years because green groups claimed that skiing would disturb critical thrush habitat.  Finally after much paperwork, it was decided that Bicknell's Thrush didn't nest during ski season and the trails could be skied without endangering the thrush.
   The green groups next employed Bicknell's Thrush to slow down the scenic ridgeline wind farms that are disfiguring the NH landscape and raising NH electric bills.  According to the Littleton Courier, they are giving the thrush some backup by hiring lawyers and going to court.
   If we worked at it, we might be able to convince the Forest Service that the Northern Pass project is bad for our favorite thrush. 

No Nukes is Good Nukes?

Fox TV was having a discussion of US nuclear weapons policy yesterday.  They had a guy saying that the US ought to get out of the nuke business, reduce our arsenal to zero, make the country nuke free.  This was a sacred mission for this guy.
   I don't agree.  US nuclear superiority kept the cold war cold for fifty years.  That's a pretty good track record.  Let's not mess it up.  The world is OK with the Americans having most of the nukes.  They figure we will do the right thing by them. 
   The anti nuke guy passed out a whopper and no one called him on it.  He claimed that the number of nuclear states is smaller today than it was in the past.  Not true.  The number of nuclear states has been rising slowly since 1945.  No nuclear state has ever given up nukes 

Too many software guys with nothing to do

Facebook clearly has too much spare time.  Just to keep busy, they rearranged my "timeline"  Now the text is on the left and the photos on the right.  Used to be the other way round. 
  This is a constructive use of software development resources?

Florida girls are pretty tough

This was on TV.  Florida, nice sunny day, an elementary school building.  Nice and neat and well kept. Lawn is mowed, sidewalks are weed free.  All is in order except, for a seven foot alligator strolling along the sidewalk.  Gator is in an ugly mood, snaps at the camera, snaps at everything.
   The school resource officer, a strapping young blonde woman walks up to the gator and drops a rope around its neck.  This sets the gator off, lot of writhing and snapping and bad temper.  Blonde is not fazed, she gets the gator turned upside down and duct tapes its jaws shut.  Then she calls animal rescue to haul it away.  All in a day's work.  She didn't even get her uniform mussed up.
  Pretty tough young lady.

Robo Disk Jockey is broken

The Notch, FM 106.something is a strange FM station.  It plays decent pop music with very few commercials or station breaks They don't do news, best we get is an occasional weather report.  I don't know what their business plan is, they don't run nearly enough ads to pay their electric bill.  To cut costs they don't have a disk jockey, they have some kind of robo player that keeps the music coming.
 Only, robo player broke down yesterday.  The music is shutting off at random, in the middle of a tune.  After some minutes of dead air, the next tune begins to play.  They apparently don't have maintenance people.  I'm wondering how long they will last.  Is someone trying to fix it, or have they gone out of business except someone forgot to turn off their transmitter? 

Polarization, (political type)

Been reading " The Second  Civil War, How Extreme Partisanship has paralysed Washington and Polarized American"  by Ronald Brownstein  The title pretty much sums up the book.  It was published in 2007, just before Great Depression 2.0   It treats the situation as a Washington DC problem, a problem caused by Congressmen who are no longer interested in forging legislation acceptable to both sides and passing it.  Brownstein complains that modern Congressmen are more interested in sticking it to the other side than forming a concensus.  All of this is interesting, but Brownstein misses the point.
   Congressmen vote their districts.  When the district has the bit in its teeth and is running in one direction, the Congressman must vote that way, if he wants to remain a Congressman.  Congressmen are only free to cut deals on issues that their district doesn't care about.
   The reason Congress is more polarized is that the voters are more polarized.  The country is evenly split between liberals and conservatives (alternate names for Democrats and Republicans)  Neither side has enough votes to push their legislation thru, so nothing gets done.  Brownstein's book would have been more interesting if he had investigated the causes of this vast split in American voters.  Why are the voters more partisan than they used to be?  The last election was a close one.  The Democrats didn't win enough House seats to give the sort of control that FDR enjoyed.  Until there is a sea change voter's attitudes about  taxes, spending, abortion, and immigration, which elects a solid majority in favor of one course of action,  little will get done.
   These things take time.  If you believe the polls, we are  seeing such a change in attitudes about gay marriage right now.  I don't really expect that kind of movement across the board.  So we will have to bumble along with Washington deadlocked for quite a few more years.  This ain't all bad,  a lot of destructive legislation won't get passed. 

$4 gasoline, its coming soon

Governor Maggie the Hassan wants another 12 cents a gallon for the state.  She and the democrats claim it is needed for "infrastructure maintenance".   Actually they want to use it to finish widening I93 south of Manchester.  Then Obama's EPA announces new rules reducing the amount of sulfur in gasoline.  The bureaucrats claim it will only cost an additional penny per gallon.  The oil industry says it will cost more like 9 cents a gallon.  I know which numbers I trust more. 
   So between Maggie and Barry, 12 cents plus 9 cents is 21 cents a gallon price hike.  When the price of crude goes up again it will be even worse.