Later On

Click photo to enlarge. I liked the photo, and I found the post (at Homegrown Evolution) to be thought-provoking:

It’s difficult to capture the cuteness of this chicken behavior with a still camera—we really should try to make a  video.  Anyway, this is called “dusting” or “dust bathing.” The ladies have dug a hole in our yard and are gleefully rolling around in it, flicking loose dirt under their wings and driving it between their feathers. This is an innate behavior and an important part of chicken hygiene. Dusting suffocates skin parasites that prey on chickens, and it also seems to be pleasurable for the hens, judging by their blissful expressions.

After dusting they puff up and shake off, and settle in to do fine cleaning by preening. When they’re done, they’re all pretty and shiny.

It’s really important that chickens have constant access to dirt—loose, dry, sandy dirt—so they can dust at will. If for whatever reason your chickens don’t have this access, whether that’s because they’re being raised in a concrete floor, or are trapped inside because of bad weather, or your chicken run is swamped with mud, or whatever, it’s a smart thing to provide them with a shallow tray of dirt so they can bathe. Dusting is nature’s favored method of insect control.

Warning: Rant Ahead

We first got our own hens because we disagreed with the industrial style of raising chickens and farming eggs.  But at the time that disagreement was purely theoretical—now it’s stronger than ever, because it’s based on practice. The more we know, and experience the fundamentals of chicken life, the more appalling the industrial practices become.  One fundamental is that chickens are designed to live on dirt. They love to scratch, peck, dig and bathe in it. Take dirt away from them and you have to scramble to make up for that deficit in unnatural ways. Being unable to scratch, chickens get bored and peck at each other—so their beaks have to be cut off. Deprived of the ability to dust, they get mites and lice, and have to be treated with pesticides. It’s just sad.

Not only sad, but also immoral and unethical and (in the Judeo-Christian-Islam tradition) bad stewardship of God’s gift of Creation—not that such a thing matters to most practitioners of those religions.

Very good video via Homegrown Evolution:

Sickening. Craig Whitlock reports in the Washington Post:

The U.S. soldiers hatched a plan as simple as it was savage: to randomly target and kill an Afghan civilian, and to get away with it.

For weeks, according to Army charging documents, rogue members of a platoon from the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, floated the idea. Then, one day last winter, a solitary Afghan man approached them in the village of La Mohammed Kalay. The "kill team" activated the plan.

One soldier created a ruse that they were under attack, tossing a fragmentary grenade on the ground. Then others opened fire.

According to charging documents, the unprovoked, fatal attack on Jan. 15 was the start of a months-long shooting spree against Afghan civilians that resulted in some of the grisliest allegations against American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Members of the platoon have been charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones.

The subsequent investigation has raised accusations about whether the military ignored warnings that the out-of-control soldiers were committing atrocities. The father of one soldier said he repeatedly tried to alert the Army after his son told him about the first killing, only to be rebuffed.

Two more slayings would follow. Military documents allege that five members of the unit staged a total of three murders in Kandahar province between January and May. Seven other soldiers have been charged with crimes related to the case, including hashish use, attempts to impede the investigation and a retaliatory gang assault on a private who blew the whistle.

Army officials have not disclosed a motive for the killings and macabre behavior. Nor have they explained how the attacks could have persisted without attracting scrutiny. They declined to comment on the case beyond the charges that have been filed, citing the ongoing investigation.

But a review of military court documents and interviews with people familiar with the investigation suggest the killings were committed essentially for sport by soldiers who had a fondness for hashish and alcohol.

The accused soldiers, through attorneys and family members, deny wrongdoing. But the case has already been marked by a cycle of accusations and counter-accusations among the defendants as they seek to pin the blame on each other, according to documents and interviews…

Continue reading.

The Wife has finished her final proofreading of the 4th edition of Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving, and I’ve uploaded the PDF file and submitted it for approval. Since the 4th edition will probably be available for purchase by Tuesday or Wednesday, I have made the current 3rd edition “unavailable.”

The 4th edition took longer than I thought. I was expecting early August as a pub date, but then I got involved in getting some of my razors revamped at Razor Emporium, and I wanted to include photos of the results. Revamping is a process that requires a fair amount of work and time, including shipping the razors to a replating service once they have been prepped. It can easily take a month before the razors return, as it did for mine.

And during that time, new shaving information and products came to market, so I was able to include those as well.

I’m quite proud of the 4th edition—it feels solid and complete. I added quite a few new product mentions (from new products or new-to-me products, like the horsehair shaving brushes) and refined some of my shaving advice based on forum feedback. For example, it turns out that the shave stick is not all that easy for everyone—some, even those who have good shaving experience, find them difficult. So I included a note that the shave stick is easy for most, but not all, shavers. Nothing is more frustrating to a beginner than having considerable difficulty with something an instructional book calls “easy”, so I am grateful to the forum commenters—as will be the newbies who read the book.

I’ll post on the blog when the book is available.

The entire column is worth a read. His conclusion:

Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.

In my travels, I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.

But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.

I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.

Gardiner Harris reports in the NY Times:

After his mother died from eating contaminated peanut butter, Jeff Almer went to Washington to push for legislation that might save others from similar fates. And then he went again. And again. And again.

Nearly two years have passed since Shirley Almer’s death. In that time,food contamination involving chocolate chip cookie dough and eggs has sickened thousands more.

But the Senate has still not acted to fix many of the flaws in the nation’s food safety system — although a bill to do so has broad bipartisan support, is a priority for the Obama administration and has the backing of both industry and consumer groups. The House passed its version of the bill more than a year ago.

“It’s so frustrating,” said Mr. Almer, of Savage, Minn. “I don’t even know who to blame.”

The blame lies with a tight Senate calendar, a stubborn senator from Oklahoma and an unusual coalition of left- and right-wing advocates for small farmers who have mounted a surprisingly effective Internet campaign. Their messages have warned, among other untruths, that the bill would outlaw organic farming.

Dr. Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of food and drugs, said in an interview that she was still confident the legislation would pass, although she confessed to being bewildered by the lengthy battle to schedule a vote.

“This is a historic opportunity,” Dr. Hamburg said. “This legislation would provide F.D.A. with important resources and authorities that we really need to be able to do our important job.”

The latest hope for the bill’s advocates was that Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, would schedule a vote on the bill this week. But the Senate calendar is full of measures that need to be passed before members leave in October to campaign, so Mr. Reid sought a routine agreement to limit debate on the measure.

Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, refused, saying that the powers granted to the F.D.A. in the bill would have financial costs, and that those costs needed to be offset by spending reductions.

Mr. Coburn also expressed doubts that expanding the authority of the F.D.A. would “result in improved food safety,” said John Hart, his spokesman.

Mr. Reid responded Thursday, saying, “In light of recent events like the egg recall in Iowa, it is unconscionable that Senator Coburn and his Republican colleagues are putting politics ahead of a common-sense, bipartisan bill to ensure that the food products our families consume every day are safe.”

So the legislation may have to wait until the Senate’s lame-duck session after November’s elections, when it still could die. Many of the gaps in the nation’s food protection system that the bill would close became apparent in the recent recall of 500 million eggs after more than 1,500 people became ill.

For instance, the F.D.A. never inspected the Iowa egg facilities at the center of the recalls. Even if it had, the agency would not have had the power to order that their eggs be recalled despite conditions it later found to be filthy. And until recently, producers were not required to ensure that their eggs were safe.

By requiring regular inspections of high-risk facilities, providing the F.D.A. with the power to order recalls and demanding food makers create plans for safe processing, the proposal would change many of the circumstances that led to the illnesses.

But in a little-known footnote to the egg recall, inspectors from the Agriculture Department regularly visited the Iowa egg facilities to grade the eggs and noted unsanitary conditions but never told the F.D.A. about them…

Continue reading.

How about a map of the world, showing country territories sized by the number of people living on $x per day—with map changing as you watch it, starting with country sizes reflecting number of people living at $1/day, then $2/day, and so on, until the final map shows countries sized by people living on over $200/day? Sound interesting? Here it is.

Other animated maps:

Land area to population

Internet users 2000-2007

Age of death (this map seems misleading: so far as I can tell, it shows total deaths in the category, rather than deaths per 100,000)

Here’s the home page.

It is difficult to compare national suffering, but this chart now making the rounds offers an interesting perspective. Click for full size.

Very interesting video, from a James Fallows post:

Ed Brayton:

Andrew Sullivan argues:

I tried valiantly not to believe this of Holder and Obama for months; I tried to see their legitimate concerns about exposing a war machine when it is still at war; I understand the need for some extraordinary renditions; and the necessity for executive power in emergencies to act swiftly, as the Founders intended. Yes war requires some secrecy. But Obama has gone much further than this now. The cloak of secrecy he is invoking is not protecting national security but protecting war crimes. And this is now inescapably his cloak. He is therefore a clear and knowing accessory to war crimes, and should at some point face prosecution as well, if the Geneva Conventions mean anything any more.

Not to mention the U.N. Convention on Torture, which requires the United States and all other signatory nations to prosecute and bring to justice those who engage in torture. But Obama has not only refused to prosecute those who engaged in torture, he has also worked diligently to prevent the victims of torture from pursuing justice through a civil suit by invoking the state secrets privilege over and over again.

But as Sullivan points out, if Obama could not — would not — fix this, then the likelihood of it ever being fixed are slim:

This won’t happen in my lifetime, barring a miracle. Because Obama was a test case. If an outsider like him, if a constitutional scholar like him, at a pivotal moment for accountability like the last two years, cannot hold American torturers to account, there is simply no accountability for American torture. When the CIA actually rehires as a contractor someone who held a power-drill against the skull of a prisoner, you know that change from within this system is impossible. The system is too powerful. It protects itself. It makes a mockery of the rule of law. It doesn’t only allow torture; it rewards it…

And this means almost certainly that torture will return. The GOP base loves it, as long as it is done against people with dark skin and funny names in places they can look away from. And they know now something they didn’t know in 2008. They will always get away with it. Even a liberal Democrat will protect you for ever with a golden shield that creates two classes of people in this country: one above the law – even a law as profound as that against torture – and those outside the government obliged to obey it.

And he points out something important about last week’s ruling:

The case yesterday is particularly egregious because it forbade a day in court for torture victims even if only non-classified evidence was used. Think of that for a minute. It shreds any argument that national security is in any way at stake here. It’s definitionally not protection of any state secret if all that is relied upon is evidence that is not secret. And so this doctrine has been invoked by Obama not to protect national security but to protect war criminals from the law. There is no other possible interpretation.

He’s right. The case in Jeppesen can be made using only material already part of the public record. The British high court already released — despite appalling threats from both the Bush and Obama administration — a previously classified account of the torture of Binyam Mohamed into the public record. But the Obama administration argues that this will force them to confirm or deny those accounts and that this fact alone implicates state secrets.

I couldn’t resist the eggplant above and I will eat it tonight, hoping that eating it will give me similar powers (for example, the power to absorb lots and lots of olive oil with little change except for the better).

I also got a couple of chicken breasts, and I decided that since I really use the stock from cooking them, I’d add a couple of chicken backs to the stock, so I got those and plan to roast them (375º F for 30 minutes) before putting them in the stock: added flavor.

Also I got a jalapeño beef patty: haven’t had beef for a long time, and figured I could chance a broiled patty. In fact, maybe I’ll roast it with the chicken backs, only not for quite so long.

In addition: some heritage tomatoes, taking another run at gazpacho. But this time I did NOT get the Whole Foods croutons to add. I’ll just use some plain bread crumbs—should be easier on my weight.

Somehow I forgot to blog this post this morning.

Continuing the bay rum and lime series, this morning’s shave use Em’s Place Bay Rum shaving soap with the Tres Claveles horsehair brush, then a fine shave with the Vision and a used Swedish Gillette blade. A splash of TOBS Victorian Lime aftershave, and I was a happy shaver.

Worth reading. He begins:

The case for appointing Elizabeth Warren to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was, at the end of the day, overwhelming. She had the original idea, she helped build political support and her own credentials have been only strengthened by her work as head of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. On Friday, the president will reportedly appoint Professor Warren as an assistant to the president and special adviser to the Treasury Secretary, with the task of setting up and initially running the CFPB.

Some of Ms. Warren’s supporters think this move is something of a half-measure — they would have preferred a conventional nomination, with all the fanfare of a classic confirmation battle in the Senate. There is something to be said for that, but the interim appointment route is by far the best way forward for three reasons…

Continue reading.

Just in time for Saturday morning, Dan Colman at Open Culture:

Earlier this week, we flagged a digital archive of comic books from the Golden Age. Now we stumble upon this nugget from the same era: A video archive that showcases the complete Superman animated cartoon series from the early 40′s, all in Technicolor. Based on the original DC Comics character, these 17 episodes appeared on American movie screens (before the showing of feature films) between 1941 and 1943. And they were taken seriously as an art form. The first episode, commonly known as “The Mad Scientist” (watch above), was nominated for an Oscar in 1942, and, in case you somehow missed it, it spells out the whole premise/backstory of the Superman saga. These episodes – all now in the public domain – can be viewed at www.SupermanWebTV.com, a service provided by Film Annex. Wikipedia provides some other options for watching/downloading these vintage bits of Americana media.

Here’s the opener:

Via Open Culture:

Take a look.

And here’s a collection of oddball shaving videos.

On the Nordic. OTOH, it’s the weekend, so perhaps a break is in order.

I just ordered an Ethernet splitter so that my TV, Blu-Ray Disc player, and Roku can all have a wired Ethernet connection to the Internet: a glimpse into the future of home appliances.

EXERCISE UPDATE: I should add that I don’t mind flaking out after 15 minutes. I believe that 15 minutes of exercise on the Nordic Track ski machine is enough that I will not lose any fitness gains, though not enough probably to increase fitness. But hanging on is good enough for today—tomorrow I can work on advancing again.

First is the problem of movie posters and the like: they are not posters. When one of them is put up, it is posted; the guy who put it up is the poster. And of course, movie posteds are the things we want to collect.”Posters”!

Another thing was presented by a CSI episode from season 2: the guy who owns a very expensive S-class Mercedes 99 (I think that was the ID) offers it to a chop-shop, which is glad to take it, the parts being worth 10-12 times separately than in the car. So then why aren’t arbitrageurs busy buying the cars as cars and then breaking them down and reaping the enormous profits from selling the parts? They don’t, so something is wrong with this picture. Can you spot it?

UPDATE: When I told the first example above (posted/poster) to The Wife, she immediately responded, “And “keeper” is the same thing… and “mailer.”" So it’s probably an example of some rule.