I see where this is going

Ananova has a story from the National University of Singapore entitled "Stroke a chicken over the internet". I'll quote most of it here.

"Users touch a chicken-shaped doll which duplicates the actions of a real chicken through a webcam link.

Touch sensors on the doll send 'tactile information' over the internet to a second computer near the chicken.

This computer triggers tiny vibration motors in a lightweight jacket worn by the chicken, meaning the chicken feels the user's touch in the exact same place as the doll was stroked.

"This is the first human-poultry interaction system ever developed," said Professor Adrian David Cheok who has been developing the technology for nearly two years.

"We understand the perceived eccentricity of developing a system for humans to interact with poultry remotely, but this work has a much wider significance."

Remote interaction could allow people who are allergic to dogs and cats to caress their pets remotely. Used in zoos, it may allow visitors to pat a lion or scratch a bear."

Now I'm sure that these folks mean well. There must be thousands of sneezing pet owners who would like to stroke their dander shedding buddies at a distance, and even more folks who'd like to beard a lion at the zoo. I'm sure these straight shooters from Singapore have never heard of Internet porn or considered that there just might be big money in some sort of 2-way touchy-feely Intenet sex.

Picture a sort of union suit with a firewire connector.

Disturbing in Durban

Durban, South Africa, where cat killing is taken very seriously, is in a turmoil over a recent spate of particularly atrocious felicides. Where are all the cat bloggers?

Noodling

Well I'd never heard of it. What's worse is that it was brought to my attention by The Economist, not even an American website. Another name for it is 'handfishing', and what it amounts to is hauling in big-ass catfish with your bare hands. These 50 lb mama catfish don't hesitate to bite, as will snapping turtles, beavers, copperheads or anything else that might be hiding down in the mud.

It's a southern sport but apparently it's even caught on in Nebraska so maybe one of you local boys know about it. Otherwise, check it out. There's also a trailer from the film "Okie Noodling".

We've all affirmed in a recent post that none of us are sissies so maybe we should get together sometime and do a little catfishing the hard way.

Can't we just use it until we need glasses?

The Washington Post reports: "Federal health officials are examining rare reports of blindness among some men using the impotence drug Viagra." Same principle as masturbation induced blindness, I guess. Many jokes will come from this story. At least there have not been any reports of Viagra causing hair to grow on the palms.

It was bound to happen

Now the 'sissify the world' movement wants to regulate our use of sharp objects. Naturally, it would crop up in England, where folks still bend their knees to a loathsome royal family. The BBC reports, as Drudge dredged up this morning, that, "Kitchen knives can inflict appalling wounds" and therefore the limey medical community is crying out for the knife control.

Actually, we here in Nebraska are 'way ahead of them. We have the knife control on the books now. Knives are covered by our nifty concealed weapon law, where they are treated exactly like guns. But, of course, you have the wonderful 'affirmative defense' to raise when you are caught carrying that new french chef's knife home from the yuppie kitchen store concealed in a shopping bag.

The brit doctors don't actually want to ban knives, just to make them safer, like the non-pointed scissors kids used to carry in school. The Doctors say today's knives are "too pointed." What next, pool cues too stiff? Baseball bats too hard? Is there no end to the foolishness?

Home butchering, like home schooling, is one of those liberating things that all governments, by their very nature, abhor.

Omaha citizens fail to solve crimes, Police Chief sez

Omaha is starting to look like Chicago in the Roaring Twenties. Deadly running gunfights in cars, drive by shootings and plain old assassination murders are happening more frequently. It would seem that the police are helpless to solve these murders, let alone stem the increased frequency.

Omaha Police Chief Warren blames this police impotence on the public. I guess that makes sense on some level, but does he really mean that they can't catch the bad guys because the victims are afraid to help prosecute or is it that they don't want to turn in their fellow criminals.

Last year at this time the city had recorded eight homicides. There have been 14 murders this year and that's on par with the homicide rate for 2003.

Chief Warren says, "Obviously the Omaha Police Department is concerned about the recent outbreak of gun violence. We have identified reducing violent crime as our top priority. It makes it difficult when we don't have the cooperation of victims and we don't have the cooperation of witnesses."

WOWT | Chief Addresses Violence

Either the victims won't talk because they are afraid of the criminals or else the 'victims' are also criminals. Either case would explain their reluctance to help the cops. In both cases, the blame is on the criminal justice system, including the police.

Why are the victims and other witnesses afraid? They know the police can't protect them. They know the courts will let them down; the baddies will be right back. And if the victims aren't really victims but participants, casualties of some sort of dope war? They clearly don't fear the police or the prosecutors or the judges or even their own muderous kind.

O tempore, o mores!

Yellow Submarine Nebraska

Actual stoned hippies with yellow submarine in Iowa - a '60's portent

Gov. Heineman Issues an Executive Order "directing all state agencies that use fleet vehicles to require state employees to use E85 ethanol and biodiesel fuel whenever available within a reasonable distance, while operating the state’s flexible-fuel or diesel-powered vehicles." Now we just need to get Governor Dave to order the state vehicles to keep to the damned bike paths. I'll be glad when the last hippy is gone.

Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish

The old feeder has been busy with his vegetable garden. Many plants were beat up in a windstorm the day after I set them out, so I had to re-plant a few. My garden isn't big, but it brings many pleasures. It also teaches important lessons. I learned something from it already this season.

I like to think of myself as frugal. My friends think I'm a miser. I try not to be a cheapskate, though. Stinginess is often taken for frugality, or frugality used as an excuse for stinginess. I make an effort.

Every year I make a list of things I'll need to get the garden planted. Then I check the list against what I have in the shed. Miracle-Gro, a fine product, is always on my list.

This year, however, it occurred to me that I hadn't bought a box of Miracle-Gro for over 5 years. There was always some on the shelf, left over from a giant box I bought in the last millennium. Does the stuff keep forever, or swell up, or what?

Upon analysis, the only explanation for the long lasting fertilizer was that I had been stinting the vegetables. Forcing them to produce tomatoes and peppers on concentration camp rations, I felt like pharaoh, commanding the Hebrews to make bricks without straw.

Not that they complained, or threatened to run away, but I have had trouble with disease and bugs. Perhaps if the little beggars had been better nourished...

I told my girlfriend about this discovery. She said it really would be a miracle if it could make the plants grow while it sat on the shelf in the shed.

Nebraska's tularemia troubles: Killer Rabbit Fever

Tularemia Ulcer
sticks out like sore thumb

You don't want to catch 'the tularemia', so you are careful when you skin rabbits, no? Most Nebraskans that hunt know this, but I wasn't aware that there was, or had been developed, types of tularemia that would be of interest to terrorists. But it is true according to the CDC, who classifies it among, "the Category A diseases: smallpox, anthrax, botulism, plague, tularemia, and viral hemorrhagic fevers. If these germs were used to intentionally infect people, they would cause the most illness and death."

Maybe because Nebraska has so many of these long-eared rats, maybe because our state successfully sought grant money for homeland defense biowarfare work, but it appears that such germs are kept at our state universities. Watched over and kept secure by well-paid, trustworthy state employees. Well now I see this in the Boston Globe's Boston.com:

"The University of Nebraska became a focus of the investigation because researchers from the school's Lincoln campus provided BU scientists with a sample of tularemia so they could begin their work last year on a vaccine against the bacterial illness, commonly known as rabbit fever.

The BU scientists believed they were working with a form of the bacteria genetically engineered to be safe for vaccine studies, and, in fact, scientists on Nebraska's Lincoln campus are permitted to study only that strain. But Hinrichs's lab in Omaha at University of Nebraska Medical Center is permitted to work with the dangerous variety of tularemia, which is covered by strict federal regulations because it is regarded as a potential agent of bioterrorism.

The CDC has declined to provide details of its investigation or to explain why it wants to examine the tularemia from Hinrichs's lab, but Hinrichs said CDC representatives told him ''that there was a link between Lincoln and UNMC.'"

This goes into the "There has to be more to this than meets the eye" file. I hope it isn't a case of incompetence. These are real WMDs. Mistakes could have consequences far worse than bureacratic embarrassment.

Update: Lincoln Journal Star story. I wish I knew how to blog.

What other good stuff is quietly kept here in Nebraska? I recall when some folks used to sweat and fret about H-bombs being kept at Offutt. None of them went off by accident, or we would have noticed.

Nebraska: a pink state?

Ernie Chamber's gay rights bill fails. Who'da guessed? Nebraskans like their queers in the closet by a big majority. According to Advocate.com, the proposal was rejected because of its inclusion in the main 2-year budget now under consideration. I think Ernie should tack his proposal onto the next bill that would raise the Unicameral members' pay.

Now our anti gay marriage State Constitution is declared unconstitutional by a federal activist judge who just knows all us hayseeds are wrong. Ryne McClaren's excellent blog has it covered here Nebraska Marriage Amendment: Unconstitutional. We should change our Constitution to allow federal judges to add amendments to it whenever they feel we need one. This would save the state big money in future litigation avoided, and make the city-slickers respect us for being progressive in spite of our peasantness.


We missed a big chance in the 50's and 60's. A real big chance.

King of the wild frontier

Condi comes up with a pretty good reason for black americans to get behind the NRA and others who support the Second Amendment. American blacks are more likely to need powerful self defense options than whites. She knows that carrying a gat or even just having one around the house means less chance to be a crime statistic. It is an even better idea when one has known enemies.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, recalling how her father took up arms to defend fellow blacks from racist whites in the segregated South, said Wednesday the constitutional right of Americans to own guns is as important as their rights to free speech and religion. In an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," Rice said she came to that view from personal experience. She said her father, a black minister, and his friends armed themselves to defended the black community in Birmingham, Ala., against the White Knight Riders in 1962 and 1963. She said if local authorities had had lists of registered weapons, she did not think her father and other blacks would have been able to defend themselves.

Read the AP story

If Condi wants to run for President, it will be OK by me. Maybe then I can get me one of these nookewlur Davy Crocket rockets from Surplus City. Looks like it would mount nicely in a big pick-up bed.

Get your sunglasses on, boys!

My first blog manifesto

Back in the day, if you had something to say, you published a manifesto. Manifesto writing has fallen out of favor, probably done in by the triumph of relativism. Which is ironic, because so many of the better known manifestos of yore were early proponents of relativism. Relativist thought carries the seeds of its own destruction; a self-fulfilling dialectic.

Whereas: reading the news is making me sick to my soul, and whereas forming opinions smacks of work, and whereas suffering public criticism from strangers is mildly irritating; I resolve to change my attitude about the Plains Feeder. I'm going to become a stringer for my own blog. I haven't the motivation to be a real contributor.

Call it the easy way out, whatever, but I'm only going to post when and what suits my whim. I'm an old, tired man who gets indigestion from thinking about current events. There are lots of things on the Internet that won't get me too agitated. Things must be happening that won't make me think humanity is a righteous flash in the pan.

I just got my garden spaded up and planted before the rain started. Now I think I'll sit back and read Candide again.

Thanks to Abe of DLMSY for keeping the Feeder alive during my absence. My girl friend said, "It has been a long 2 weeks." the other day. It has been. Besides my unpleasant bout with PANG, a very close uncle died. Om mani festo, hum.

Omaha Election Results

Cross posted from DLMSY:

Tuesday was election day in Omaha, Nebraska's largest city (some would say "only"). Incumbent mayor, Mike Fahey, easily defeated challenger, Dave Friend, with 60.7% of the votes. All but one member of the City Council was re-elected. Full results here.

The turnout was pathetic, just 24.6% of registered voters. Lincoln's City Council Election last week managed 29.3% without a mayoral contest. While that was nothing to write blog home about, it looks good compared to Omaha's miserable showing.

But Did He Ever Return...

Another Oldie But Moldy from Don't Let Me Stop You.

No, he never returned.
And his fate is still unlearned.
He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston.
He's the man who never returned."

The old Kingston Trio song played out in real life recently. This story is so strange that we wonder if it could be a hoax. At any rate, we are not making it up. We found it in Marianne, a French news weekly magazine, but there are numerous hits for it on Google, too.

A Dutch tourist, Sheridan Gregorio, was stuck in the airport in Fortaleza, Brazil, for five months. His vacation was ending, and he had spent all of his money. No problem, though, he still had his return ticket.

But there was a problem: the airport departure tax was due before he could board his flight, and he had no way to pay it. One thing led to another, and he missed his flight. His ticket was non-refundable.

There he stayed for five months, like Tom Hanks in Terminal, picking up odd jobs here and there to earn a little money. When he finally saved up enough to pay the tax, he persuaded the airline to revalidate his ticket.

Something tells us he'll have a little extra cash or a credit card on his next trip.

Protest Warrior

Here's a cross post from Don't Let Me Stop You, just to see if we can wake up PTG. :-)

We've taken quite a few shots at the Democrats, so in a bid to offend everyone, we offer this sign from the Protest Warrior site.

The group "joins" moonbat demonstrations with its members carrying signs that appear to be standard, leftwing loony fare, until you look closer. For example, one sign we love says:

Except for ending Slavery, Facsim, Nazism and Communism
War Has Never Solved Anything

On at least one occasion Time Magazine was fooled into thinking they were authentic moonbats, protesting against Ann Coulter. Time failed to notice that the "organization" listed on the supposedly anti-Coulter sign is "Communists for Kerry."

So if there's a protest forming near you, why not pop on over to Protest Warrior and see if you can get into a counter demonstration with them. After all those people carrying the sign saying "Give Communism a Chance" really need someone to bring them back to earth.

Omaha, the Blue Island

I'm just listening to Tom Becka, an Omaha radio talk show host, point out that Mayor Fahey's slick TV ads are far superior to challenger Dave Friend's low-budget bits. And he believes Omaha voters will fall for a slick, upbeat campaign ad that glosses over all the real issues. Becka suggests that issues like pot holes and trash hauling are what Dave should have emphasized, blah blah. But Fahey's ads don't touch these issues either. Fahey's ads are richly produced, feel-good ads. Costly ads. Friend's ads look cheap because there are cheap. Friend's friends aren't all rich people, like Mike Fahey's friends are.

Why does Becka think Omaha's mostly liberal voters would throw in with a man whose fat-cat friends can afford to buy Hollywood quality ads for him? I thought the Democrat party stands up for the little people and loves the poor. Why do they look to old-fashioned bosses with greasy chins for leadership?

Nebraska, where you can't tell the Democrats from the Reublicans without a program.

Don't trust PDF documents

I recall when the Nebraska Bar Association told its members to get a copy of Adobe Acrobat so they could produce the PDF documents required for electronic filing in certain courts. I know a bit about how PDF files can hide text and formatting material. This always made me suspicious enough to use software to scrape off as much of this non-displaying stuff as possible from my PDFs. Today Michelle Malkin has a post on how, "bloggers following the Sgrena investigation are linking today to a leaked version of the U.S. military's report on the incident, which appears to inadvertently reveal critical classified information. The link points to an Italian newspaper that gives instruction on how to copy and paste 'hidden' text in the PDF version of the report."

The Italians have been most ungracious in their handling of the unpleasant accident, and all the Bush haters have welcomed their Italian sob-sisters as fellow travellers. If howling Italians give you any concern at all, just get out a pictorial history of WWII and check out what the Italians were up to then. They should keep their traps shut for at least another generation. But the part of the story that caught my eye was the ease with which the anti-American investigators were able to recover redacted portions of a leaked PDF document.

Folk, you have to be careful when working with ANY file format that has hidden formatting code. Not only can these hidden strings of characters be used to hide secret messages, but they can just as easily tattle on the author. Different versions, edits, redactions and subsequent additions are often stored by these complex file types. I wonder how many legal pleadings and briefs contain hidden 'work product' that might be more than just embarrassing.

Should defense attorneys in Federal criminal cases be checking the old electronic filings that sent their clients to the slammer for exculpatory information buried in the prosecution's documents?

Dead On Their Feet

In Australia a small group of farmers have secured permission to bury dead people in a standing position. They'd be wrapped in biodegradable body bags and basically be used as fertilizer it seems. It saves burial space and no gas would be wasted in cremation.

Can't get much more eco-friendly than that, but it does raise some interesting questions. Not the least is the old phrase, "being laid to rest". No rest for these dead ones; they'll be on their bony feet working to help make the crops grow. At least until Mother Earth and her legion of worms and other subterranean fauna suck every last bit of human identity from them.

I don't see this being adopted in the rural midwest anytime soon where trips to the cemetary, decorating graves and communing with the dead can border on the obsessive.