FDA gets squeamish.

From it's shiny tiled laboratories and ivory towers, the FDA wants to ban the spreading of manure on farmer's fields.  FDA claims manure contains germs that will contaminate the crops grown in manure fertilized fields.  Wow! What a discovery.  Must be a Nobel prize waiting for this one.
  Farmers have been spreading manure on fields since 1000 years before Moses.  We have cuneiform tablets from Akkad in Mesopotamia describing the use of manure. That was 5,000 years ago.  In all that time, the practice hasn't killed us.  I doubt that manure turned deadly just last week.  It's the same stuff today as it was in Sargon of Akkad's time. 
   Plus, spreading the stuff out where the sun and rain and wind get at it, will kill just about anything. 
   Anyhow FDA is out there trying to ban the use of manure in agriculture.  Your tax dollars at work. 

So what's a nomad?

When I learned the word, nomads were hunters or herdsmen with no fixed abode.  They followed the game or the graising, striking their tents and moving on as the food sources moved them.  Like Abraham. 
   So I am reading "Stonehenge, the Indo European heritage", by Leon Stover and Bruce Kraig, some European archeaology, discussing the earliest European site.  And this amazing phrase pops up.  "a nomadic people who farmed,clearing forest land for dispersed settlements as they passed." 
   Oh really.  Once they put in the hard work to clear the land and plant, they aren't going to strike their tents and move on, not until the harvest is in anyhow.  And probably not after harvest either.  Harvest ought to produce enough food to get thru the winter, which is entirely too heavy to take with them.  It's generally accepted that farming makes the settled life possible.  The transition from hunter and herder to farmer is the end of the nomadic life.  So, "a nomad people who farmed" makes one wonder about the author's common sense.
   He is describing the "Danubian" or "Linear Pottery" folk, who settled western Europe before the coming of the Indo Europeans.  But he doesn't offer any evidence (potsherds, flints, gravegoods, etc) that the Danubians were nomadic.  So he throws out a hard to swallow concept with no backup.
    
  

Three Musketeers, a Steampunk Spoof

Another remake.  They do most of the famous scenes from way back when, D'Artagnan saying farewell to his father, D'Artagnan getting whipped by Rochfort at the inn, going to England to recover the diamond studs.  But the sword fights all degenerate into 20th century kung foo.  Both the musketeers and the Cardinal's guard have airships, the baddies like milady DeWinter turn into goodies.  The cast is pretty much unknown except for pretty boy Logan Lerman who plays D'Artagnan, and Orlando Bloom who plays an undistinguished Buckingham.  They manage to crash an airship onto Notre Dame cathedral.  The steeple punctures the gasbag so they cannot lift off.  Which leads to a sword fight along the roof of  the cathedral. 
   Trouble is, the spoof is so heavy that I could not take anything seriously.  It just goes on, sword fight to kung foo to air ship collision, to sword fight, and on and on.  Nothing seems very real, nobody is ever in jeopardy. 
   It can't hold a candle to the 1970's version with Michael York and Raquel Welsh.

When Obamacare cancels someone's insurance

Ask them if they voted for Obama. 

Weather is clearing up here

TV news has been reporting horrible weather, travel delays, lots of bad stuff.  They show a storm center still down around Philly, heading my way, arriving this evening. 
  You couldn't tell it by me.  Over night snow turned to rain, it's warmed up and rained all the snow off Cannon Mt.  It was blowing and raining hard this morning, but it's tapered off, and its clearing a little now.  Either we get another hit when that storm center gets here, or it blows out to sea and we get dried out.

Would you buy a used COD from this man?

Carrier on board delivery aircraft that is.  An unexciting but vital aircraft.  COD flies high priority cargo from land bases out to carriers at sea.  Back in the day, I well remember LogAir, who flew a big turboprop Argosy transport into our base in Minnesota every day, loaded with spare parts for our fighters.  Plenty of times we would tell Maintenance Control that we would have fighter so-and-so back in commission as soon as LogAir came in.  That was on a stateside Air Force base in peacetime.  I dare say the spare parts situation is worse at sea. 
   Anyhow, the existing fleet of C-2 Greyhounds, after many years of service, is in need of replacement or refurbishment.  The Navy has a bid from Grumman to rebuild the weary Greyhounds, and a bid from Bell-Boeing to furnish V22 Osprey tiltrotors.
  And now, Lockheed Martin is proposing to pull 70 or 80 S-3 Vikings out of the boneyard in Arizona, refurbish them, build new and larger fuselages for them.  Cargo aircraft typically cube out before they weight out, in other words you run out of room to pack stuff into them long before the cargo gets too heavy to fly.  So a new a bigger fuselage would make a better freighter and still be competitive on price.  The S3 Viking is/was a twin jet carrier based antisub aircraft that the Navy retired  a few years ago. 
    So, looks like the Navy is looking at rebuilt Greyhounds, rebuilt Vikings, or brand new and pricey Ospreys.  I have my doubts that the Osprey has enough range, but I don't have any figures.

Greenies want to hike food prices

Heard on NHPR this morning, the greenies are going to push for a state law requiring all food containing "genetically modified organisms "  carry a special warning label.   . There is no evidence that "genetically modified organisms" have ever harmed anyone, in anyway.  The ultra conservative FDA sees nothing wrong with them.  They have been in widespread use for many years with no evidence of problems. 
   Never mind, they must be evil and we shall drive them from the market with a scarlet letter on the package.  That will let us feel good about ourselves for weeks and weeks. 
   For farmers, grocers, and everyone else in the food business, such a law is yet another government regulation, raising costs, exposing them to lawyer predation, and making it harder to stay in business.  For lawyers, fixers, and bureaucrats, such a law is a full employment act. 
   For consumers,  it's just more fine print on the back of the package.  When was the last time you read all the fine print on a box of frozen veggies? 
   If I was in the grocery business, I'd comply with the law by putting "GMO" stickers on everything in the store, just to cover my ___.