I Got My Buck

It only took until age 51 to finally get a deer. Fourteen years of hunting prior to getting married, a 21 year "break", and then the last couple of years with my youngest son. I always enjoyed "the hunt", especially now that I've had the chance to spend some time in the stand with my son. There are a number of pictures out here.

The first 14 hunts I was younger and generally hunting with older hunters in NW Wisconsin farm country. I tended to be pretty impatient and unable to stay on a stand for a long while, so was usually "driving" (walking to move the deer to others). I covered a lot of brush country in those days, and did a fair bit of "road hunting"; driving around to find deer and then shoot from the road (illegally, but it was sparsely populated and not a lot of enforcement). Through a combination of poor skills, badly suited personality traits and no doubt a little bad luck, I just never quite downed a deer even though I had a number of what seemed like "golden opportunities" over the years.

One thing that likely contributed was my tendency to enjoy technology may have hurt me in deer hunting. I purchased a 30-06 semi-automatic rifle while I was in college with a 3-9X scope that I really couldn't afford. I never spent enough time shooting it to be comfortable since the ammo was also very expensive. Worse, I was usually trying to shoot at a deer 200 yards away with the scope cranked up to 9x in order to be sure of seeing antlers. A really bad combination for accuracy.

Some tendencies hold in life, especially if they at least seem to be beneficial, so I bought a 3-9x scope to put on my smooth bore 12ga for hunting this year, but the fates spared me. After 2 attempts to get sighted in I was unable to hit the target at all and was starting to panic that I'd have no gun on opening day of hunting in my new stand. I decided to purchase a cheap 20ga rifled barrel single shot open sights as a "backup" as I launched on my last ditch attempt to sight in the 12ga.

The second shot with the single was the best target shot I've ever made-completely center, and moving out to 50yards, I was able to shoot a 3in group. As things usually work, the 12ga also sighted in with ease on that outing BUT, I came to the conclusion that "simple was better" in this case. I didn't get a shot Saturday with that gun, and if I had, yet another piece of "bad luck" would have played out. Although the gun shot perfectly so I never touched the sights, apparently they weren't tightened at the factory and the perfection was random. Saturday PM I noted that the rear sight was ready to fall off the gun.

My son however decided to head for home Saturday night, so I was able to hunt with his 20ga pump open sights on Sunday AM and for a change I had a standing shot out the window of my stand, braced, through open sights, and hit the deer in the heart. Surprisingly (to me) he ran about 25 yards directly at the stand before simply falling over.

So ends my deer curse. Hopefully I will be like Boston and be able to show a new trend pretty rapidly in future years, but no matter, I will still enjoy the hunt. It is very much about the activity rather than the result, just like fishing. It is also another of those "great equalizers". The stands may be a bit nicer than my youth, the "shack" much nicer, but cool stands, guns, clothes, or camp technology won't really bring the deer in. Being able to afford expensive sabot ammo for targets is nice, but the deer have to show up AND, the accuracy has to be reproduced with a live creature out there.

Rather, senior corporate management and technical people are pretty much identical to farmers, construction workers, college kids and mechanics in deer camp. Difficulty rolling out of bed in the AM, the cold, the need for naps at noon, the appetites in high gear due to the time out of doors, stories of "the one that got away" or the "big one", just glimpsed through the brush or more imagined than real. All those memories and more translate over the 21 year gap with perfect continuity. Most of the things that the masses believe make a difference really don't, but many that they assume don't count, really do.

The hunt is one of those experiences that ties one rather closely with reality. The planning and calculations to arrange for deer and projectile to come to the same point at the same time and of course the facts of "life and death". The steak or burger on the plate is quite abstract, the connection to the living thing it came from tenuous at best. The still-warm gut sack that one can't help but realize is very much like the "power pack" that gives us our motive power is much more connected with reality. Our species is significantly better equipped for a small group to venture out in search of game than it is to conceive, design and build computer systems. True, we are ABLE to do the latter, but our natural adaptation is much more to the former. To those willing to relate to reality, hunting is almost certainly "familiar" at some basic human level.

There are of course very few "liberal hunters". The concept is very close to an oxymoron. To interact with reality in real vs imagined and ideal nature, using guns, a potent symbol of "individual rights and power" is something that isn't going to sit well with many on the left. The idea that people are allowed to have guns for any purpose is only given lip service in the interest of political calculation. Guns are one of the hated "dividing issues" as in "God, Guns and Gays", the "false issues" that the evil right uses to divide the country according the the MSM. The existence of hunting is part of the "barbarism" of the right, the left has "evolved beyond that".

Calling hunting "barbaric" in one breath, holding up human kind to be worshiped, and then explaining natural selection as taking "millions of years" in the space of a few paragraphs of thought would make perfect sense to most liberals. However, it seems pretty undeniable that we were fully adapted to hunting and it was our main manner of survival up to 10K years ago when we began the farming task. Not much in the way of natural selection happens in 10K years, so we have exactly the same human nature that we had at that point. If hunting was "barbaric" then , we are still very much "barbarians" and there is nothing the left can do to change that.

I've succeeded in the hunt. Long live the barbarians.

Tale of Two Houses

I've blogged on the contrast between Gore's house and Bush's house before, Snopes is usually pretty reliable, so it looks like the previous stories are pretty correct.

As I've said before, if the MSM covered Republicans like they are covering Gore, I'd have no problem with this not being covered. Anytime humans try to adhere to a higher standard, some level of hypocracy results, since humans, especially humans in leadership positions, are going to fall short; because "leadership" means trying to push beyond what everyone else is doing.

Gore wants to be an "environmentalist", but he falls well short. He happens to fall well short of even the "Evil George Bush". It would seem that anyone that is in the "story business" would find a story that the "supposed non-environmentalist horrible President" actually does BETTER in his personal life environmentally than the "Author, Oscar Winning and Nobel Prize winning" ex-VP Gore. Naturally, those that believe that "the press is unbiased" will see no difficulty at all with this.

The following is from an e-mail being passed around ...

House #1
A 20 room mansion ( not including 8 bathrooms ) heated by
natural gas. Add on a pool ( and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern "snow belt" area. It's in the Sout

House #2
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground.

The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from sho! wers, s inks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

~~~~~
HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of the "environmentalist" Al Gore.

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas; it is the residence the of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

Mental Health?

You have to love the Democrats. Just when Kucinich is in the news as "questioning Bush's mental health", it comes out that he saw a "large triangular UFO at Sirley McClaines house", gets asked about it in a debate, and indicates "yes, he has seen a UFO".

http://www.onthewriteside.org/2007/10/kucinich-hears-directions-from-ufos-and.html

Today he has initiated impeachment proceedings against Cheney. He is a busy man, I think the obvious question in his case wouldn't be if he has SEEN a UFO, but rather if he has PILOTED one! It only makes sense, how else would the Representative from Pluto get back and forth to his consituency?

PC Magazine 'Leopard is “by far the best operating system ever written'

In his 4.5-star (out of 5) review of Leopard, Edward Mendelson (pcmag.com) maintains that Leopard is “by far the best operating system ever written for the vast majority of consumers, with dozens of new features that have real practical value.” Mendelson “found Leopard to be startlingly fast, brilliantly streamlined, and packed with conveniences an

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ReaganLot

Many Democrats took until Bill Clinton to get over the fantasy of the Kennedy "Camelot" that never was. For liberals to create a fantasy and then try to hold reality to that fantasy is somewhat expected, but it is too easy to forget that conservatives are humans too. All too human; the beautification of Reagan seems to have really gotten into high gear on the right with the disenchantment of many with W, or maybe it just takes 20 years or so to create a good fantasy.

Here we have the supposed realist Patrick Buchanan waxing nostalgic - I'll spare a lot of copying, it really isn't worth reading, but have to bring in one paragraph:

Reagan defined conservatism for his time. And the issues upon which we agreed were anti-communism, a national defense second to none, lower tax rates to unleash the engines of economic progress, fiscal responsibility, a strict-constructionist Supreme Court, law and order, the right-to-life from conception on and a resolute defense of family values under assault from the cultural revolution that hit America with hurricane force in the 1960s

Eeek! Yes, the "good old days"! Lower tax rates? Certainly not relative to Social Security--nor even purely on general, Pat must have lost the budget deal of '86. Fiscal Responsibility? Huge deficits were a hallmark of the Reagan years. Strict Constructionist court? Does the name Sandra Day O'Connor ring a bell? Actually, I give Kennedy even lower marks, he signed on with the left on Kelo, and when private property goes, the very foundation of any rights are gone. Kelo is right in the running with Roe for worst abdication of the role of supporting the constitution in history, and we have a Reagan appointee with the majority on Kelo, and a Reagan appointee as the swing vote supporting Roe.

Abortion? Yes, the words were nice, but there wasn't even an attempt to actually move on anything. W got rid of partial birth, it shows a certain dis ingeniousness on Pat's part to not remember that Reagan did precisely NOTHING on that issue. "Family values"? Again, words are nice, but I'm not sure that I see anything of reality to point to as Reagan being any stronger than GW for example.

Republicans USED to be known as "the party of fiscal conservatism", but it was REAGAN more than anyone else that destroyed that issue for the party. I'm not saying that I "completely disagree"--it is VERY hard to win anything being "the party that says no", but making a decision and then claiming you never did takes "honesty and consistency" off the conservative table and then what you have left is called liberalism. I don't really think Pat wants to go there.

It is true that Republicans can see themselves as "victims of their success" relative to the loss of the USSR as the all-purpose enemy. It is apparent that Terrorism just isn't ideologically satisfying enough for guys like Pat, but it can take a few decades to fully develop a really good villain for some. Pat may need a few more 9-11s before he sees them as worthy of attention at a purist level, unfortunately after we take the HillBama plunge in '08, I expect that the Terrorists will help Pat see that the new evil can kill a few millions too, once you get "incompetent" folks like W and Cheney out of the way.

I'm not sure it makes any difference who is the Republican front runner. The navel gazing and wishing for the past seems like the prevalent Republican sentiment. I suspect after 4-8 years of 100% Democrat rule a few will start to realize that purity, navels and history are all nice but the real world tends to be more messy and tends to "intrude" on introspection and wishes after a bit. I don't believe in living by relativism, but only a fool thinks it isn't a factor. We tend to operate by "compared to what" and the frog boiling is always an issue.

Having said all of the above, I very much believe in Reagan and consider him EASILY the greatest President of the 20th century. The REAL Reagan, not an imaginary one. To buy into a fantasy Reagan reflects badly on the real meaning of what Reagan stood for.

Pat and many Republicans are comparing today with a vision of Reagan that never was. When they have the opportunity to compare the real experience of a number of years of HillBama, etc with the crop of Republicans running in the future, the bar will be at a different place and the tune will change. Words and ideas are powerful, but many times it takes experience before true understanding is gained.

McCain Blogger Interview

Good short summary of a McCain interview. The Powerline argument on waterboarding (which is in opposition to McCain) is pretty hard to argue with. Anyone that doesn't give the US the "moral high ground" compared to al Quaeda is probably enough a relativist that any moral high ground they might aspire to is pretty much a swamp.

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Media myths about the Jena 6

A local Jena Journalist gives another side of the MSM story of racism. Is this side all true? I have no way of knowing, but on NPR and CNN, this was a story for which there was "no other side". I'm always suspicious when a story only has one side. Much like the Duke Lacrosse team which was finally exonerated, the MSM isn't likely to go back and point out that the story isn't nearly as one dimensional as they indicated in their sensational reporting of the "racist side".

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Sharp drop seen in US deaths in Iraq

BAGHDAD - October is on course to record the second consecutive decline in U.S. military and Iraqi civilian deaths and Americans commanders say they know why: the U.S. troop increase and an Iraqi groundswell against al-Qaida and Shiite militia extremists.This is AP, so not one of the more "right wing" sources. Reading the whole article is worthwhile-lots of military and Iraqi discussion on WHY the surge is working and how we can get to overall success. Expect this news to be generally buried in the MSM as it has during the whole surge process and resulting improvement in Iraq. The MSM and the Democrats decided "Iraq is hopeless", and it isn't likely that they will give up on that track since anything like success could be quite positive for Bush and therefore negative for Democrat prospects in '08. I expect their general control over the sheep is too great, and we are still headed to a Democrat landslide and the most damaging withdrawal they can arrange. Seeing Iraq as a "Fiasco" is central to their thinking, and having facts get in the way has never been a weakness of the Democrats or MSM. When one is a liberal it is NEVER either too early or too late to declare hopelessness and defeat in any endeavor!We all have emotions, one of the cleavages between left and right is if we believe that the world MUST match our emotions. Those of the left tend say "absolutely"-the world owes them behavior that matches what they feel, both positive and negative. Those that they hate need to fail, and the one that they love the most (self) needs to always be seen as "good or victim". Those that they "love" are those that make their world view seem more real. Those on the right, believing that the highest functions are logical rational have desires, but understand that these may or not be met. Results that match with desire often require lots of effort, time, thought, flexibility and just plain old "luck". Success is never assured for anything worthwhile, and failure is always within reach by just quitting. Such is the world, Iraq is a great example of the difference between the two types of people.

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Power Line: Best line of the campaign so far

"In case you missed it, a few days ago Senator Clinton tried to spend one million dollars on the Woodstock concert museum. Now, my friends, I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time."I'm not a McCain person, but it is very hard to beat this for humor in politics!

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Wicked

My Son's marching band performed to music from this musical, and the Sophomore-Seniors had went down to Chicago to see it last spring while my son was yet a freshman. We journeyed to the Oriental Theater in downtown Chicago to see it Friday evening.

First of all, in entertainment value, acting, music, etc, it was a great evening. They did a find job and I loved the play. At the human emotional level, it draws you in, and you identify with the "Wicked Witch" and come to understand at least a bit how things could have gone so wrong for her.

My guess though is that the author of the book and the developers of the play would like one to get a whole lot more out of the tale than just "a nice evening". Most artists would. The original is a classic morality play-Good / Evil, and good wins in the end. Like many a modern portrayal, the update is a lot more complex. Modern artists find that to be much better, more "realistic". I find that a bit interesting-do we need our art to be "realistic" in that way, or is that even a reasonable concept?

We are all well aware of the complexity of the real world-sometimes good people suffer and die horribly and the worst of the evil prosper. Like everything else, modern art wants to let us know that there is no transcendence -- the evil aren't really evil and the good are at least not as good as they seem, and maybe not even good at all. Many things aren't what we think they are, and maybe there are no answers at all. We who are alive and have some even slight level of life examination know that. Do we need art to try to drive it home as well?

The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory

Not very sensible, but kind of a good read.

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The Smartest Futurist On Earth, or at least Bill Gates thinks so.

If legendary inventor Ray Kurzweil is right, the future will be a lot brighter - and weirder - than you think.I've enjoyed his books and I've been lucky enough to hear him speak. Ray may be "out there", but it is great to hear someone positive once in awhile in this world where everyone has way more to be happy about than at any time in history, but most find a reason to be negative anyway!

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Consilience

https://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-Wilson/dp/067976867X

I've been reading more books than I've been Blogging on. I just finished "Consilience" by Edward O. Wilson. A previous author of two Pulitzer prize winning books; "On Human Nature", and "The Ants". The term "consilience" refers to the "unity of knowledge", how discoveries in one field can be critical to others. One can view the physical world as a layered architecture where physics is the "base", with chemistry and biology on top, followed by all the social sciences, politics, the arts, religion, etc.

Wilson has the vision that it COULD all be linked together so that we would truly understand our universe. He strongly laments the "post modernist" view that "all points of view are equally valid" - not surprising for a scientist. He seems much more willing to entertain the potential for divinity than many scientists, even though for himself, he is a materialist. He DOES seem to realize at least part of the horror of a universe where there is no transcendence, but he sees the risks of transcendence as too high -- mostly on the environmental front. He sums up the materialist vs transcendent views as "The uncomfortable truth is the the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure".

That is an interesting statement in that I would question whether any human will acquire a "full measure" of EITHER of those areas separately either. However, to come to a conclusion of what that which completely transcends the physical can do, seems a bit presumptuous. Man is so quick to set limits on what it is that God can do, it is good God has us around to lock those limits in on infinite power since we are so "intelligent" (just ask us). While we seem good at providing limits for the infinite, it is strange that we seem less inclined to limit ourselves.

He makes a good comment on the state of knowledge and information in the world; "We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it and make important choices wisely". I think he is right on that at some level, and he also points out in the book how important it is to place the information into context with other knowledge, and even make it into a "story". He does seem to have some real insight into human nature.

He waits until the very end of the book to get into environmental doom and gloom. He sees us as rushing headlong to destruction of the planet, and has decided that "somehow" man needs to "morally" pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and see vast control on development and technology as "the only moral thing to do".

A neat trick for a strict materialist to come up with, apparently a new form of human brain will somehow "evolve" and suddenly operate with this "environmental moral imperative" in the next few decades? It seems unlikely to me that randomness should have bequeathed us with this function, and in a materialist universe we are just going to have to wait around for a few million years of "survival of the fittest" and hope that the right kind of "morals" for environmentalism randomly fall out the back end of the random process. 

If such doesn't happen, that must mean that "the right kind of morals" just didn't randomly arise at "the right time" and the great roulette wheel of randomness will just keep spinning along without us. Small loss in a cold godless universe!

It is nice to see that even strict materialists have "hope" -- I'm thinking that he may want to invest more in lottery tickets with his faith in the great god of the dice. It seems so strange that a random process would generate a brain that questions the outcome of the random process (the existing state of the world), yet somehow believes that one of the outputs of that random process (us) is somehow responsible -- and soon to be "morally mandated" to "fix it".

Goracle Peace Prize

Al is a Nobel Prize winner! He invented the internet, provided the model for "Love Story", personally flew down to the Texas fires with James Lee Witt, but now he has a a real win to go with some of his imaginary ones.

Given the list of people below, I think he fits right in.

2005 MOHAMED ELBARADEI -- Fantastic UN nuke inspector. Iran, North Korea, you name it, it keeps them all under control!

2004 WANGARI MAATHAI. A Kenyan ecologist who teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the industrialized nations.

2002 JIMMY CARTER JR., Was apparently an OK peanut farmer, but that was the peak of his ability. Has never met a foreign policy situation he couldn't make even worse.

2001 KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General. Managed to preside over Saddam lining various pockets with something like $20 Billion from the UN "Oil for food" (or more accurately "Palaces for Saddam") program

1994 YASSER ARAFAT, A guy that never met a Jews he didn't want to provide as painful a death as possible.

1992 RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Wrote the fake but not even close to true book "I, Rigoberta Menchu."

1988 THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES, Great group of folks that couldn't stop a sorority pillow fight, but are darned competent at various forms of rape and child abuse around the world.

Democrats Attack Turkey

Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. Turkey has recalled their ambassador since the Democrats have decided it is time to label a pre-WWI action in Turkey as "genocide". I'm sure the fact that Turkey is one of the only allies in the region in the War on Terror with 70% of the air cargo and 30% of the fuel going through there has NOTHING to do with it.

The Democrats are real "bridge builders", in this case to Armenians that have been dead since before WWI. Just a small harbinger of the kind of inciteful foreign policy that we can look forward to when they take over completely in '08.

Oh, and on CNN, the HEADLINE was some Iraqi families sue Blackwater ... this did make the side headlines if one looked, but we DO know what CNN considers important. Nobody would ever accuse the MSM and the Democrats of overtly working to assure defeat in Iraq would they? No, deciding that a time when we have troops in harms way that depend on supplies through an ally is a GREAT time to "get the record straight" on something that happened 100 years ago!