Crows know who their friends are

From the New York Times.

In the Seattle area, where rapid suburban growth has attracted a thriving crow population, researchers have found that the birds can recognize individual human faces.

From latter on in the same article…..

After their experiments on campus, Dr. Marzluff and his students tested the effect with more realistic masks. Using a half-dozen students as models, they enlisted a professional mask maker, then wore the new masks while trapping crows at several sites in and around Seattle. The researchers then gave a mix of neutral and dangerous masks to volunteer observers who, unaware of the masks’ histories, wore them at the trapping sites and recorded the crows’ responses.

The reaction to one of the dangerous masks was “quite spectacular,” said one volunteer, Bill Pochmerski, a retired telephone company manager who lives near Snohomish, Wash. “The birds were really raucous, screaming persistently,” he said, “and it was clear they weren’t upset about something in general. They were upset with me.”

Again, crows were significantly more likely to scold observers who wore a dangerous mask, and when confronted simultaneously by observers in dangerous and neutral masks, the birds almost unerringly chose to persecute the dangerous face. In downtown Seattle, where most passersby ignore crows, angry birds nearly touched their human foes. In rural areas, where crows are more likely to be viewed as noisy “flying rats” and shot, the birds expressed their displeasure from a distance.

I think this applies to more then just crows.

Making Hay the Cheap Way

Gene Logsdon latest article is proof that he gets better with age. Much of his writing when he was younger was simply a collection old timer knowledge. In other words he would tell you people use to do before the age of factory farming and sprinkle it with a few anecdotes about his own personal experience just to prove it could be done. But now that Gene is in his 70’s, he has a lot of time tested ways of doing things that are all his own.

If you think you ever might need to make hay and store hay on the cheap you should read this article.

Essay of the Week: 8/24/08-8/30/08

Spengler is not the best writer out there. His writing is often hasty, his facts are sometimes dubious (although not as often as some his detractors would have it), and he is not particularly consistent. But he has one merit that outweighs all these sins. His is an original thinker.

That does not make him right, but it does make him an interesting read. His latest essay Americans play Monopoly, Russians chess is no exception. Almost everyone in America from far right conservatives to far left liberals would disagree with his conclusions. But if you are intellectually honest, formulating why he is wrong will require you to rethink your own viewpoint.

Hope the Chinese are prepared to buy a lot more dollars

From CNN Money….. (H/T Naked Capitalism)

Among the nightmares lurking around the corner for the already battered housing and credit markets would be a meltdown at mortgage financing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Although few are predicting an imminent need for a bailout just yet, credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s recently placed an estimated price tag on this worst case scenario — $420 billion to $1.1 trillion of taxpayer’s money.

This dwarfs how much it cost to help banks during the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. That cost taxpayers about $250 billion in today’s dollars.

That is just Standard & Poor’s worst case scenario of course. But even if you cut that figure in half we are talking about some serious money. And other people want cash as well. From CNBC…..

Lobbyists for the U.S. automakers—General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler—briefed White House officials, as well as U.S. Rep. John Dingell and other Michigan Democrats, on a possible bailout and plan to unveil the proposal after Labor Day, according to the report.

The plan is for the government to lend some $25 billion to the automakers in the first year at an interest rate of 4.5 percent, or about one-third what the companies are currently paying to borrow, the report said.

Under the proposal, the government would have the option of deferring any payment at all for up to five years, the article said.

Who can argue against this? Iraq gets reconstruction money. Banks get bailed out. Why not the Big Three? But somebody has to loan the money to the Federal Government so that it can do all this rescuing and saving the world type stuff. The Chinese are doing a great job of providing us with free money. Current 30 year treasury rates are 4.57. The Inflation rate has been running at over 5% the last couple of months. At those rates the Chinese are paying us to take their cash.

But their capacity to do this is not infinite.

I know this will shock you all

From the Wall Street Journal….

If anything, preschool may do lasting damage to many children. A 2005 analysis by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class. Likewise, Canada’s C.D. Howe Institute found a higher incidence of anxiety, hyperactivity and poor social skills among kids in Quebec after universal preschool.

Too Tall Has Died

Joe Galloway writing on Michale Yon’s site….

Their story was told in a book my buddy Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and I wrote 15 years ago titled “We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young” and in the Mel Gibson movie, “We Were Soldiers,” released in the spring of 2002. Too Tall and Old Snake were ably portrayed in the movie.

Their argument over which of them is the Best Pilot in the Whole World sadly came to an end this week when our friend and comrade-in-arms Maj. Ed (Too Tall to Fly) Freeman slipped the surly bonds of earth and headed off to Fiddler’s Green, where the souls of departed cavalrymen gather by dispensation of God Himself.

Too Tall Ed was 80 years old when he died in a hospital in Boise, Idaho, after long being ill with Parkinson’s disease. He turned down a full dress hero’s funeral in Arlington National Cemetery in favor of a hometown service and burial in the National Cemetery in Boise, close to the rivers he loved to fish and the mountains he flew through in his second career flying for the U.S. Forest Service.