Sooo. That didn’t work out as planned.
Anything on tv tonight?
Another Open Thread
Still busy.
Open Thread
Busy busy busy.
But time to wish our own acerbic JSF a Happy Birthday.
Open Thread
My sister sends along this picture of her cat and dog (a mastiff) “playing”:
BTW- time to get some training for Lily. She is becoming very aggressive to dogs on our property, and earlier this evening shot out and tried to attack my neighbor’s mastiff and another big dog. Her rough was up and it took me about thirty seconds to get her under control, and I even hit her for the first time. I really need to get this behavior stopped.
I’m off to relax.
The Real Crime Is That It Happens Every Day
Via Erik Kain (someone not enough of you read or link, btw), is Radley Balko’s follow up of the SWAT raid in Missouri where the cops popped a cap into a corgi:
But despite all the anger the raid has inspired, the only thing unusual thing here is that the raid was captured on video, and that the video was subsequently released to the press. Everything else was routine. Save for the outrage coming from Columbia residents themselves, therefore, the mass anger directed at the Columbia Police Department over the last week is misdirected. Raids just like the one captured in the video happen 100-150 times every day in America. Those angered by that video should probably look to their own communities. Odds are pretty good that your local police department is doing the same thing.
Go read the whole thing.
There is so much insanity going on in this country on any given day that it is hard to keep track of it all, but surely our bizarre behavior and attitudes and laws regarding drugs has to be near the top of any list of inexplicable nonsense. Alcohol, ok! Marijuana, bad! Property taxes- tyranny! Cops raiding your house and shooting your dogs because of a plant- ehh, they had it coming!
Just completely bizarre and I hope in a few years we will look back at this and wonder just WTF we were thinking.
The Real Crime Is That It Happens Every DayPost + Comments (83)
And Now For Something Completely Different
I know this has nothing to do with screaming about how Obama let you down or debating Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation, but Eugene Volokh has reviewed Kagan’s body of scholarly work and has deemed it to be quit substantial in quantity for the period of time she has spent as a legal scholar, quite important and relevant in the field (having been cited frequently), and of an “exceptional” quality and focused on real-world issues, “as it should be, and as it too rarely is.”
It would be absolutely pointless for me to read Kagan’s works, because I won’t understand it at all, but this is the kind of analysis I really appreciate.
*** Update ***
Here is another good piece by BTD.
And Now For Something Completely DifferentPost + Comments (176)
This Blog Has Gone to the Birds
I’ve spent some tweaking the last couple of weeks with the bird feeder positioning and the type of seed, and I think I finally have a winning combo.
The last week was all out chaos because I was just putting out sunflower seeds, and every bird in the tri-state area was eating here. You could watch the level of bird seed drop by the hour. The problem, though, was that I was attracting a lot of bigger birds- grackle and blue jays, and the cardinals and little fellows were getting pushed out.
I think I have finally found a winning solution. Out back, I have one feeder close to the ground filled with nothing but black sunflower seeds. That gets the attention of the big fellows. The other feeder is about 5 feet off the ground and has perches, and I filled it with a Nature’s Way bird seed for songbirds. That gets all the chickadees and the cardinals, and they are all unmolested by the big birds on the ground.
Out front, near the rhododendron, I have a perch feeder that I filled with Scott’s Bird Smart, and that seems to be doing a really good job attracting the birds I like. I’m getting lots of little fellows like these two:
I never thought I would be interested in bird feeders and birds, but it really is a lot of fun. Plus, it just sounds good to hear chirping and wind chimes.