Monthly Archives: May 2012

Mining’s Legacy – You SURE we want to frack?

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Terry| 2 Comments
Picher, Oklahoma

Mining waste from 20th century lead mining towers over the town of Picher Oklahoma. Or should I say, the FORMER town of Picher, one of an EVER growing list of ghost towns in the U.S., brought about by the short-term greed of humanity.

I had a meeting in Alaska a couple of weeks ago.  I flew from Sioux Falls, to Minneapolis, to Anchorage.  For work, I study land-use and land-cover change, and try to predict what will happen in the future.  So when I fly, I always (try to) get a window seat, and ponder the landscape below.  And, inevitably…it’s depressing. 

What I REALLY find laughable are those climate-change skeptics who seem to use their religious belief as a reason why climate change can’t be real.   A line of thinking for these folks seems to be that man is INCAPABLE of affecting the earth at that scale, that only “god” can do so.  All I have to say to these people…have you ever flown?  Have you ever LOOKED at the landscape below as you fly over?  On my trip, I flew over what some would think is some of the most “wild” landscapes in North America, in Alaska and western Canada.  But this “wild” landscape is anything but.  Clear-cutting of forest means that the once unbroken forests of the West are now a maze of cuts and logging roads.  Flying from Minneapolis over the northern part of the U.S., and you see the vast expanses of grassland that are now solid farm fields.  Fly over a major metropolitan area, and you see endless miles of homes, industry, and roads.

But yet some climate change deniers say humans are incapable of altering the earth’s ecosystem at that scale?  We’ve already forever changed a majority of the earth’s land surface.  That alone would cause climate change, even without the burning of fossil fuels. 

One sight you see ever more frequently when you fly are the effects of mining and energy extraction.  When you’re driving in the West, you see it, but the scale isn’t as readily apparent as it is when you’re flying over.  IN areas with natural gas extraction, when you drive, you may see an individual, small patch of land with a well. When you fly over, you see hundreds upon hundreds of wells, interconnected by a maze of pipes, electrical wires, and roads. 

There’s VERY little that has a more devastating, long-term effect on the landscape than mining.  The New York Times today had a story this week about the area around Picher Oklahoma, and Treece, Kansas, an area where suitability for human habitation has FOREVER been changed.   For the sake of a few decades of short-term financial gain, the lead mining waste in the region has forever altered the landscape, where just TOUCHING the water gives you chemical burns, where every breath of air draws in a dose of lead, where sinkholes from the mining activity may open up and swallow you at any time.

Fracking proponents say the practice is “safe”…despite the practice being VERY new, despite there being VERY little analysis of long-term effects.  Just in the last decade, when technological advances have made fracking economically feasible, people living near fracking activity have ALREADY been impacted by water that is no longer drinkable, and by ruined landscapes.  Once your underground water source has been contaminated by something like this, there’s no going back.  That water source is unlikely to be suitable for human use for many, many centuries to come.

People and their greed.  People and their complete and utter selfishness.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a poacher of wildlife at the small scale or an oil company at the larger scale…ALL people care about are themselves, and their short-term financial well-being. 

The people of Picher, Oklahoma and Treece, Kansas may have a word or two on the effects of such short-term greed.  Two once-thriving urban areas…now ghost towns.

Posted in Ecosystems at Risk, Environmental Awareness

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Yes, South Dakota, let’s help Big Oil even more

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Terry| 1 Comment

The economy continues to continue a very slow recovery from the Great Recession.  People are suffering.  Oil companies are making record profits.  You would THINK this would be a time to balance things out, and move to help people in general, rather than continuing to provide tax breaks and incentives for oil companies.

But no, politicians continue to cave to the power of Big Oil.  In South Dakota, our governor Dennis Daugard is simply choosing not to enforce laws regarding gasoline quality, as he bows to oil interests.  Oil suppliers in the state have been intentionally mislabeling gasoline as E-87 (octane) or higher, when in fact some has been as low as E-83.  The low-grade gasoline is much cheaper to produce, so a company that produces E-85 but sells it as E-87 makes a larger profit.  Which is JUST what oil companies need right now, right?

In the story above, you have oil companies officials ADMITTING the practice is rampant.  But South Dakota is refusing to actually enforce laws regarding gasoline quality.  This despite all newer cars requiring the use of E-87 or higher fuels, with the lower-grade gasoline being passed off as E-87 in the state harmful to car engines in the long run.

But this is America, where politicians are in the back pockets of Big Oil and other corporations.  Laws?  Harming consumers?  Unimportant!!  At least to politicians who seem hell-bent on doing ANYTHING to protect the profits of their oil industry friends.

Posted in Environmental Awareness, Politics

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Scum of the Week – Adam Turner

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Terry| 9 Comments

What is it about gun “enthusiasts”?  How does one ever reach a point in life, where your primary ambition becomes making sure you can carry a gun wherever you want, whenever you want?  Why would you NEED to carry a gun wherever you want, whenever you wants?  Are people SO paranoid, SO insecure about their own pathetic lives, that carrying a gun around somehow gives them comfort?  Makes them feel important?  Makes them feel like a bigger person than they really are?  Are their lives SO pathetic that THIS becomes their most important issue in life?

Sioux Falls is considered changing an executive order that bans firearms from city property.  City lawyers are concerned they’re opening themselves up for a lawsuit by having such an executive order.

Leading the charge to get the executive order changed is Adam Turner, president of the Sioux Falls chapter of “South Dakota Open Carry”.  This jackass says that “gun-free” zones make people less safe.  Yes, Mr. Turner, arming EVERYONE, having a BUNCH of trigger-happy gun freaks like yourself running around will DEFINITELY make the world a safer place.  Given that the majority of the human race appears to be either 1) dumber than a cardboard box, and/or 2) hateful and uncaring about their fellow man, pardon me if I don’t feel “safer” knowing gun freaks with IQ’s lower than my pet cocker spaniel are all running around carrying, even when I’m in such “dangerous” locations such as city parks.  Thank GOD we have nutjobs like Turner around to ensure that I’ll have a host of wackos around with guns, while I’m on city property watching my son play soccer, or enjoying a walk through the park.

Congrats Adam Turner.  You and the ENTIRE “South Dakota Open Carry” group are well-deserved winners of the Scum of the Week award.

Posted in Culture Wars, Scum Of The Week

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Several exciting reads for you…

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Terry| 1 Comment

Journal Article - Applied GeographyWork has been, well, stressful lately.  We have a big project with a lot of visibility, and with visibility, comes a lot of political pressure.  Thankfully, it’s also been a quite productive time, thanks to the project.  As a scientist, productivity seems to be measured in publications, and it’s been an unprecedented last few months for pubs for me.

So a list of five new pubs that have all come out in the last couple of months, ones I’m sure you’ll all want to pick up!!

A Land-use and Land-cover Modeling Strategy to Support a National Assessment of Carbon Stocks and Fluxes – Terry Sohl, Ben Sleeter, Zhiliang Zhu, Kristi Sayler, Stacie Bennett, Michelle Bouchard, Ryan Reker, Todd Hawbaker, Anne Wein, Shuguang Liu, Ron Kanengieter, William Acevedo – A journal article in Applied Geography discussing a strategy we developed to model land-cover change to support the analysis of carbon and greenhouse gas fluxes.

Spatially Explicit Land-use and Land-Cover Scenarios for the Great Plains of the United States – Terry Sohl, Ben Sleeter, Kristi Sayler, Michelle Bouchard, Ryan Reker, Stacie Bennett, Rachel Sleeter, Ron Kanengieter, and Zhiliang Zhu – A journal article in Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Environment about land-use scenarios and maps we created for the Great Plains.

Contemporary Land-cover Change in the Atlantic Coastal Pine Barrens Ecoregion – Terry Sohl and Lauri Sohl – A journal article on recent (1973-present) land-cover change in the Pine Barrens ecoregion, covering parts of New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. No access at the moment, this is supposed to be published any day (in the journal Geographical Review). Kind of cool because my co-author is also my wife!!

Scenarios of Land-use and Land-cover Change in the Conterminous United States: Utilizing the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios at Ecoregional Scales – Ben Sleeter, Terry Sohl, Michelle Bouchard, Ryan Reker, Chris Soulard, William Acevedo, Glenn Griffith, Rachel Sleeter, Roger Auch, Kristi Sayler, Steve Prisley, Zhiliang Zhu – A journal article in Global Environmental Change about the development of a unique set of land-cover scenarios for the U.S. that are consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change SRES scenarios.

Role of Remote Sensing for Land-use and Land-Cover Change Modeling – Terry Sohl and Ben Sleeter – Book Chapter – My first book chapter, which is exciting, but a book chapter ranks quite a bit lower on the scientific “cred” totem pole than a peer-reviewed journal pub.

Posted in Scientific Awareness

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My wife, savior of Hummingbirds

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Terry| 1 Comment
Ruby-throated Hummingbird

A Ruby-throated Hummingbird in my yard. A beautiful male hummingbird like this one spent a harrowing (for him, and me!) few hours in my garage this weekend, before my wife saved him.

May is probably my favorite month of the year.  It’s when the warm weather usually takes hold after a long, cold South Dakota winter, and from a birding perspective, no month of more spectacular, with summer birds arriving and many migrants moving through that you don’t see at any other time of the year.  One of the highlights of May for me usually happens around May 8th or so, when the first Ruby-throated Hummingbird shows up in my yard.  We’re at the fringes of their normal breeding range, but I live across the street from a state park that has some forested land next to a river, and it does seem like they breed there.  Breeding has never been confirmed in my part of the state, by I do have hummingbirds around my yard all summer long, including young ones that usually show up in my yard sometime in July or so. 

We’ve had an incredibly mild winter, and March was spectacularly warm for South Dakota.  Many trees and other plants bloomed a good month before they normally do.  I’m not sure if that’s the reason why, but this spring has been very slow for hummingbirds in my yard.  I have only seen one male occasionally visit my yard.  Sunday, I was out doing yard work most of the day, came in the garage, and noticed a male Ruby-throated Hummingbird flying around the top of the garage, constantly banging up against the roof as he tried to find his way out.  We have a very tall garage, with a good 6-feet or more above the actual garage doors.  The poor little guy was obviously freaking out, and couldn’t figure out that to get out of the garage, he needed to first go down about 6 feet to where I had left all the doors and windows open. 

I continued my yard work, hoping he’d find his own way out.  But after an hour, he was still in the garage.  He was obviously getting tired, as he’d fly up and bang up against the roof for a bit, then come down a foot or two and rest on a wire to the garage door opener.  I started to try to find a way to lure him out.  I brought in my hummingbird feeders and placed them low in the garage.  Later, as I worried about his strength, I put one high near his wire perch, in the hopes that he’d at least feed.  He was having none of it, with no interest in coming to the feeders.  After 2 hours or so, when his energy was obviously getting less, I slowly brought up my 2 long-handled fishing nets in the hopes of trapping him in between them, so I could bring him down and out of the garage.  No luck.  He wouldn’t budge from his wire perch and fly into the nets, and I certainly wasn’t going to force the issue.

I was very frustrated, thinking that the one hummingbird I had coming to my yard was about to die.  I went back out and started working in the yard again, when I saw my wife coming very slowly out the back door of the garage with a very long feather duster in her hands.  She said “Is he on there???”.  Given that the bird didn’t want to fly much any more because it was tired, my wife slowly raised the feather duster up by the bird on the wire until the hummingbird clung on.  Then she ever-so-slowly and carefully brought the duster down and out the garage door.

The hummingbird was indeed clinging to the feather duster!  But he must have been very tired, because even after getting him out into the sunlight, he just clung there for a minute or two.  Finally, he zipped up and away.  Given how long he was in there and how tired he seemed to be getting, I just hope he was able to feed quickly and recover.

One thing I will do is change out the ends of the manual garage pulls that dangle down from my garage door openers.  They are bright red balls hanging down in my garage.  I had heard that hummingbirds are sometimes trapped in garages, because they area attracted to the bright red color, fly into the garage to investigate, and can’t find their way out.  I’m not sure if that’s what happened to this little guy, but just to be safe, I’ll be removing the red balls.

Posted in Birds

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Bigotry and hatred as a political weapon

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Terry| 3 Comments
Rick Santorum

Faith, Family, and Freedom? As long as it's a white Christian heterosexual family.

Rick Santorum today urged Mitt Romney to use the gay marriage “controversy” as a “potent weapon” against Obama in the upcoming election.  Santorum says Obama is the one who is out of touch with what America “values”.

If it’s Rick Santorum who is IN touch with what America values…we’re screwed.  If ranting and raving against homosexuality and gay rights is what represents American values…we’re screwed.  If advocating for women to be treated as they were 200 years ago represents American values…we’re screwed.  You can’t build a democracy on a foundation of hate, but that’s what SO many on the Republican right seem to be trying to do. 

It’s not just the gay marriage issue.  It’s bigotry and hatred in general that might as well be the core platform of the Republican party.   Just look at some of the “core” Republican issues over the last decade, as the party swings ever further to the (very radical) right. 

  • Gay rights - Summed up very nicely in a nutshell by Santorum’s comments today.  Gays and lesbians aren’t people in the eyes of the radical right.  Constitution be damned, they’re not to be treated like other human beings.  They’re to be used as a “political weapon”, nothing more.
  • Race – Republicans have managed to lock down the South, helped in no small part by a not-so-transparent use of racism as a political tool.  It even has a very well-established name…the Republicans’ Southern Strategy, a large part of which is based on exploiting racial fears among white southerners.
  • Religion -  Promoting fear and intolerance of Islam, or ANY other religion other than mainstream Christianity has also obviously become a key part of the Republican platform.   Again, Santorum himself could be a poster child for using religious hate as a “potent weapon” in his politics.  Republicans have counted on the “values voters” in the last several election cycles, whipping up paranoia among evangelicals (aka…wackos) about some imagined conspiracy to trample on their religious rights or remove religion from Americans’ every day lives. 

Using bigotry, hatred, and promotion of fear has certainly be a winning political hand for Republicans.  God knows there are enough folks in America who share those views, and blindly follow any idiot who is bold enough to come out and actually campaign on a platform of hate and intolerance. 

But how long can such a strategy last?   I keep hoping that Americans will see the light and realize you CANNOT build a nation based on hate.  I keep hoping that Republicans’ exploitation of racial, religious, or sexual preference issues is a short-term blip, a trend that can’t last in the long run.  But then you see complete wackos like Rick Santorum get a shocking amount of support in the Republican campaign, and it makes you realize just how much fear, paranoia, and bigotry there is out there. 

I’m sure that Biden’s unintentional forcing of Obama’s hand on the gay marriage issue wasn’t something that Obama wanted to touch from a political perspective.  That indeed is why I’ve been disappointed by Obama on many fronts, his lack of conviction on issues such as this, ones where he should be leading the “anti-hatred” bandwagon.   But now that it’s out there, now that Obama has been forced to back gay marriage, I hope he seizes the opportunity. I hope he RELISHES a discussion on gay rights in America. He SHOULD be using the issue as an issue where he can shame Republicans for their platform of hatred.

Given Obama’s wishy-washy nature on tough issues like this though, I’m not holding my breath.

Posted in Culture Wars, Politics

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Brian Brown – Scum of the Week

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Terry| 4 Comments

Scum of the WeekCongrats North Carolinians.  Thanks to your perceived need to specifically alter your constitution just to discriminate against a certain class of human beings, whenever I think of your state, I will think of backwoods, rednecked bigots. 

Is North Carolina really SO full of homophobic, insecure, hate-mongoring losers that the “issue” of gay marriage became a hot-button topic for the state?  I will NEVER understand how people can be so incredibly insecure about their own beliefs and place in the world, that they feel the need to lash out and bash or discriminate against another class of human beings with a different lifestyle.

A special congratulations goes out to Brian Brown – president of the “National Organization for Marriage”, as I’m giving him the coveted “Scum of the Week” award.  How proud he must be to lead an organization whose sole purpose is to effectively preach intolerance towards gays.  But PLEASE, Mr. Brown, do us all a favor and give your organization a PROPER name. Your group isn’t about “defending” marriage, as you claim.   “Marriage” between a man and woman doesn’t need “defending”.  My marriage to my wife is affected in NO way by the legal or personal relationship of a pair of human beings somewhere else on the planet.  Gay marriage in NO way “threatens the institution of marriage” as your organization claims.

Hence the call for a name change for your organization.  How about “Organization of Homophobic Bigots”?   Or “Insecure Rednecks of America”?  Something along those lines, Mr. Brown?  If you’re going to preach intolerance and hatred, you might as well be honest with America, and with yourselves, about what your true motivations are.

Posted in Culture Wars

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Please, can I be a Jackass for a change?

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Terry| 3 Comments
Butt

What happens when you combine chivalry, a butt, a tiny airplane seat, and a WORLD of sweat? As I can tell you from experience...it ain't fun.

Good.  Lord.  

I had a life-changing experience today.   I have decided to join the rest of humanity.  I’m sorry, ma, but…I have decided that I too shall become an a$$hole. 

What brought on this life-changing move?  What has caused me to abandon 45 years of trying to be a nice guy?  Well…being a nice guy, that’s what brought it on.  As I’ve stated in the past, I’m NOT exactly fond of traveling.  Today (well, I guess it’s now yesterday back home) was my son’s birthday.  He turned 9.  So of course, it being my son’s birthday, I of course had a work trip scheduled for a location about as far away as you can get in the U.S.  I’m meeting with folks in Alaska to talk about a carbon and land-cover work up here.  I TRIED to get the meeting moved, just half a day, so I could be home for my son’s birthday.  Uh-uh, meeting wouldn’t move.  So, I made the most of it, missing the start of the meeting Monday afternoon, spending the morning with my son and taking him out for breakfast, and then boarding a plane to get to get to Anchorage late this evening so I can join the meetings for the rest of the week.

Couple missing (most of) my son’s birthday with a day of travel, and I wasn’t in the greatest mood to begin so.  I have no problem with the first leg of my trip.  The Minneapolis to Anchorage leg was packed, with them asking for volunteers to take a later flight.  I took heart in knowing I at least had a window seat, somewhere I could at least KIND of “relax” for the 6-hour flight.  Well, relax as much as one can relax when stuffed into a sardine can for that long.

I sit at my seat, settle in…and this lady sits in the middle seat next to me, with a 4-year old boy sitting on her lap. Then this old businessman in a suit comes and sits next to her on the aisle.  The lady says the airline messed up and instead of sitting her and her 4-year old together, each of them had middle seats about 15 rows apart.  She said she had planned to have the 4-year old sit on her lap for the whole trip.  TERRIFIC, I thought!!  JUST what we need for an already cramped space.  Well, I needn’t have worried, because the flight attendant came by and told the lady that any child over 2 needed their own seat.

And then the fun began.  The lady turned to the businessman on the aisle, asking if he’d move to her son’s middle seat in the back of the plane.  The businessman didn’t even SAY anything, he just held up his hand, and then went back to reading his Wall Street Journal.  So….the lady turns to me.

What do you do?   You have this lady and her 4-year old son, asking for a favor.  The flight attendant said the 4-year old COULD sit in the back on his own (!!!!!!!), but the 4-year old was having NONE of that, saying he wanted Mom.  So here I am, on my OWN son’s birthday, confronted with a moral dilemma.  What to do?

I did as I was raised…I was a gentleman, and gave up my window seat, to take a middle seat in the back of the plane, for a long, 6-hour flight.   I walk back to this kid’s seat, and lo-and-behold, the aisle seat is occupied by a guy who may well have been the Japanese Grand Champion sumo wrestler.  The lady in the window seat?  For all intents and purposes, she could have been this guy’s grandma.  They certainly seemed to share some genes or something.  So, I give a little chortle, and squeeze in between at least 600 pounds of humanity.

Good.  Lord.   6-hours in hell itself may have been preferable to this flight.  Sumo Wrestler dude had flesh that filled up his seat and kind of “oozed” underneath the armrest into my middle seat territory.   Grandma on the left?  That armrest was HERS, damnit, and she made it ABUNDANTLY clear that I was not to enter her territory.   We sat in the plane for a while, waiting for it to load, and it just got hotter, and stuffier, with each passing minute.  I couldn’t wait for the plane to take off, as I thought surely then the air would kick in and at least the temperature would go down.

Uh….no.  We get airborne, and it’s not getting any cooler.  In unison, Sumo dude, Grandma, and me reach up to turn on the air vents.  Nada.  Zippo.  Nothing.  No air is coming out of the vents at all, much less any cool air.  Sumo dude rings the bell for the flight attendant, who politely asked “Have you tried twisting them on”?   BRILLIANT!!  NO, we had NOT thought of such an ingenious plan!!  Not believing it, she herself tries each nozzle, and says “I guess you’re right, but there’s nothing I can do”.  It’s not just our row, there seems to be a block of about 10 rows without any air.

Do you know what happens when you’re surrounded by 600 pounds of flesh in a hot stuffy space?  SWEAT, that’s what happens.  Sumo dude is already sweating from his brow even before the plane takes off.  Once we get going and it’s not getting any cooler?  I first FELT the sweat when his tree-trunk sized upper arm kept brushing against me.  I make like a self-conscious woman trying to squeeze into a dress one size too small, and try to make MYSELF as thin as possible so I don’t have to touch either of these two behemoths.  IT’S….NOT…WORKING.  The simple laws of physics dictated that I would NOT have any buffer space between myself, Sumo dude, and Grandma.

The brushes of Sumo dude’s arms became less frequent as I think he became a little more conscious of my displeasure.   But THEN started the butt-sweats.  What are “butt sweats”, you ask?   “Butt Sweats” are when a very large sweaty man tries to fit a jumbo sized body in a medium-sized seat.  You could SEE not only his armpits getting sweaty, but soon I started to FEEL THE WETNESS where his mass of flesh was spreading into my space under the armrest.  OH MY GOD.   I’ve had some gross experiences in my day.  I’ve changed plenty of diapers.  I’ve been pooped on by a flying bird.  As a kid, I even RAN THROUGH A FREAKIN’ GLASS DOOR and sliced my wrist clean open, complete with chunk o’ missing flesh and blood pouring out.

I WOULD DO ALL OF THOSE THINGS 1,000 TIMES over, rather than experience another flight like this one with 6 hours of Sumo dude sweat.  When we finally landed, I truly felt like I had been in a sauna, and the soggy right leg of my jeans certainly LOOKED like I had been in a sauna.  GOOD.  LORD.  I couldn’t WAIT to get to my hotel room so I could strip down and shower.  As I type this, I’m thinking of taking my clothes from the flight and lighting them on fire, rather than bringing them home. 

And thus….my decision to become an a$$hole.  I don’t make this decision lightly, but MY GOD, HOW MUCH CAN ONE MAN TAKE!?!?!  I didn’t even get a THANK YOU from this woman after I volunteered to trade seats with her son, and Sumo Dude and Grandma were anything BUT pleasant, which at least might have partially mitigated their own disgustingness.  

What the hell happened to “Karma”?   Do a good deed, and you shall be rewarded?  That sure as HELL didn’t happen to me today.  I’ve been cynical for, oh, about 25 years now, but I’ve been a gentleman cynic.  NO MORE!!!   Why the HELL should I be nice to people, why SHOULD I be a gentleman, when it for DAMN sure doesn’t seem there are many other gentlemen or ladies out there??  For ONCE, can’t I be the a$$hole??  Can’t I be like that jackass businessman, who didn’t even have the courtesy to SPEAK about the situation, much less volunteer to give up his seat?

No, don’t worry Ma and Pa.  You did a good job raising a gentleman.  It’s not in my nature to be a selfish jackass.  I’ll continue holding the door for people.  I’ll continue saying “please” and “thank you” 1,000 times a day.  I’ll be a good tipper, be nice to puppy dogs and children, and yes, next time a not-that-friendly woman asks me to switch seats so she can sit by her little boy, I will say yes. 

All I ask is for the right to bitch about other folks on my blog!!

Posted in Uncategorized

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Perusin’ and Musin’

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Terry| 4 Comments

Some random thoughts from perusin’ the web…

Jobs Report Doesn’t Bode Well for Obama – Not a good jobs report today.  Unemployment inched down, but only because so many people have left the work force.  It’s a damned tough environment for a sitting president to win re-election.  Frankly though, there’s just not much Obama can do to get things going on the economic front.  This is a global downturn, and U.S. government economic policy isn’t the key to our economy.   Romney says he’ll create 500,000 jobs a months and drop unemployment to 4%.  That’s about as likely as Gingrich’s promises to lower gas prices to below $2.00 a gallon.   However, it’s pretty obvious Republicans SHOULD have the edge given 1) the down economy, and 2) an American public who is stupid enough to actually BELIEVE some of the crap Republicans shovel down their throats.   The only thing working against them is 1) their OWN ineptitude and 2) a complete lack of any strong candidates.

Redneck Massachusetts Man Attacks Hawk - No South Dakota, we do NOT have a monopoly on redneck losers.  In Massachusetts, a man was arrested when he attacked a Red-tailed Hawk who had captured a pigeon…presumably to “protect” the pigeons in the park?  The story also notes other memorable Massachusetts losers, such as a fish hatchery operator who shot herons, Osprey, and even Eagles that hung around his hatchery. Never underestimate just how incredibly cruel, selfish, and evil people can be.

Sioux Falls Man found Guilty of Raping 7-year Old – See the story above, multiply the horror and disgust by a factor of, oh, around 1,000, and you have this story of a Sioux Falls man raping a 7-year old.  About 99% of the time, I’m against capital punishment….but BOY do stories like this make me at least pause and consider it for a second. 

First Hummingbird of the Year - Like clockwork since we’ve moved into our current house, the first Ruby-throated Hummingbird of the year arrives sometime during the first week of May.  Today was the day for 2012, when I saw a beautiful male hummingbird flitting around the yard much of the day.  The link at the top of the paragraph shows the migratory progress of the Hummingbirds for this spring.  I will GREATLY enjoy having them around my yard for the next 4 1/2 months, until they depart by mid- to late-September.

Read more »

Posted in Birds, Politics, Sports

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Your Government’s Role in Killing Wildlife

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Terry| 2 Comments
USDA Wildlife Services

"Wildlife Services" sounds pretty innocuous. The truth is pretty ugly however.

I have a friend at work who largely shares my political and social views, with one exception.  He’s much less cynical than I am.  When push comes to shove, I tend to believe that people will choose the path of least resistance or the path that gives them the biggest personal gain, no matter the negative consequences.  My friend is quite a bit rosier regarding the human race.   Every time I start to move in that direction, every time I start to feel my cynicism wearing off a bit, I read a story like this one, forwarded by another friend at work.

The story is about the Wildlife Services program at the U.S. Department of agriculture.  If you’re an animal lover, be prepared to be disgusted.  I’m already disgusted with how people treat wildlife.  After all I live in South Dakota, where the State Bird is an introduced species whose ONLY purpose for people here is as something you can shoot at.  But it’s one thing for red-necked South Dakotans to be out popping off wildlife.  It’s another for the Federal Government to be doing it, especially when so much collateral damage is being done, as shown in this article.

I’m amazed at the political clout a few large land owners in the West have regarding wildlife issues.  In South Dakota, the prairie dog has seemingly been labeled as public enemy #1…largely due to the efforts of a VERY few ranchers who claim prairie dogs cause immense damage to grazing lands.  A VERY few private citizens have somehow twisted the system to their advantage, so much so that prairie dogs are being poisoned on a lot of PUBLIC land in the state, if an adjacent land owner requests “control” of the species.   “Public” land in general is managed in South Dakota for seemingly one purpose…for the COMPLETE exploitation of whatever “resources” may be found on that land.  Parks?  National Grasslands?  Conservation and wildlife are DEFINITELY a secondary consideration in South Dakota.   Grazing trumps wildlife in every case.  In state and other parks, it’s the use of the area for camping, hunting, cross-country skiing, or any other human activity that is far and away more important than the actual habitat or wildlife in that park.

This story about the Wildlife Services part of USDA is simply an example of the same mindset, but at a Federal level.  Endangered species?  Completely harmless species?  People’s PETS, for god’s sake?   It’s a pretty disgusting picture of what Wildlife Services does, all supposedly for the sake of “protecting” people from that nasty harmful wildlife.

$$$$$ trumps wildlife…it’s a message that sadly continues to gain traction in the U.S.    And again…my cynacism and complete lack of faith in humanity is restored.

And despite my status as a Federal employee and as someone who has strongly DEFENDED government in the past…with recent experiences I’ve personally had, and with many of the recent news stories, I’m having a hard time maintaining that support of government.

Posted in Ecosystems at Risk, Environmental Awareness, Politics

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