Showing posts with label Blog Mirror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog Mirror. Show all posts
Lex Anteinternet: Friday Farming. The vehicles that changed the West.
Lex Anteinternet: Friday Farming. The vehicles that changed the West.:
Friday Farming. The vehicles that changed the West.
Oh, sure, there were snowplows that went out on the narrow two lane highways, but off the highways? Well, you better be pretty sure you could get back.
Now, my father only ever owned one 4x4 vehicle, and it was one he bought from me. But we didn't go up in the high country or into the foothills once winter started. That was out. You stuck to areas that were relatively near a county road or that were blown off, and probably down around 5,500 feet or less. Beyond that? Forget it.
And this was true for ranchers too. Some men stayed up in the high country, but they stayed there. . . all winter long. People often fed by horse drawn wagon (and in a few places, still do).
The Dodge Power Wagon changed that. And it was a creature of the Second World War.
Lex Anteinternet: World War Two U.S. Vehicle Livery: National Museum...:The father of the Dodge Power Wagon, the 1/2 ton truck, a fair number of examples of which can be found in the Rocky Mountain West in spite of the small number produced, was in addition to being too light, too top heavy.
With the Power Wagon, you could now get there in winter. Maybe not everywhere, but darned near everywhere, even up in the high country.
And that meant you didn't need to keep hired men up in the high country in line shacks all winter. For that matter, with a trailer, you could easily feed in a fraction of the time it had taken with a wagon. You probably didn't need hired men for that either, if you had them.
And while it would take awhile, really when NAPCO started converting Fords and Chevys into heavy duty 4x4s, it would also mean that sportsmen could get back there in the winter too.
Revolutionary.
Related threads:
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, September 6, 1924. A Question
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, September 6, 1924. Putting down in Boston.:
Saturday, September 6, 1924. Putting down in Boston.
More than I have, unfortunately.
Truly, this isn't good news.
Microplastics in human brains.
Bioaccumulation of Microplastics in Decedent Human Brains Assessed by Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry
Another good argument for a simpler life.
Lex Anteinternet: Monday, August 25, 1924. True then and now.
Lex Anteinternet: Monday, August 25, 1924. Ratifying the Dawes Plan...:
The Cheyenne paper pointed out that summer was drawing to a close.
QC: Japan & the bomb (p12) | Wednesday, October 18, 2023
This the final part of a twelve part series by Fr. Joseph Krupp on the war against Japan during World War Two, culminating in the decision to drop the two atomic bombs in August, 1945.
So why am I linking this in here?
Indeed, this entire series is teed up to appear on Lex Anteinternet in August, 2025, the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two and the dropping of the two bombs. This 12th installment, however, deals with post war Japan for the most part.
A lot of people know that Douglas MacArthur wrote the Japanese constitution, or caused it be written. Fewer know that he reworked the Japanese economy, although I did. Japan is one of the few modern nations which is regarded as having incorporated a significant degree of agrarianism and distributism into its modern economy, although that's long enough ago that a lot of it is likely lost now.
The discussion on that is well worth listening too here, and goes beyond the situation of Japan itself, and into a agro distributist economy to some degree in general.
Lex Anteinternet: An existential wakeup call.
Lex Anteinternet: An existential wakeup call.:
An existential wakeup call.
Just the other day, I ran this:
Lex Anteinternet: Intellectual disconnect. With everything on fire, ...: The weather report for today from the Trib: A headline from Cowboy State Daily: ‘It Was Armageddon’: Eastern Wyoming Community Evacuated By ...
Now, from Cowboy State Daily, we learn this:
Wildfire Burns Harriet Hageman’s Family Homestead, More Evacuations Ordered
By any measure, this is tragic. And the story is well written, and sympathetic. Indeed, it provides some details about Hageman that I was unaware of, including the size of her very large family I didn't realize that she was one of six siblings.
That frankly explains why she's a lawyer. The law was, and to some extent still remains, the occupation that agricultural parents often want to see a child go into, often due to the erroneous belief that lawyers don't really work.
That's not the point here, however. At some point in her post high school life Hageman turned to the very hard right, or at least seemed to, and has been part of the Wyoming position that's all in on unaltered fossil fuel production.
The degree to which agriculturalist refuse to accept the science on this in Wyoming is itself really remarkable. Farmers and ranchers depend on the land being sustainable, worry about drought and heat, and then go on to dismiss what they're seeing with their own eyes.
The article notes that the Hageman's tragically lost their early home on the ranch, with this one currently belonging to a nephew. I believe that nephew may have appeared in her campaign ads. It also related:
About 8,000 acres of Hugh Hageman’s 25,000-to-30,000-acre spread burned, taking away some of the pasture needed for his 1,000 head of cattle.
“It’s devastating,” said Hugh Hageman when reached by Cowboy State Daily late Friday.
I'm sure it is.
Reality calls up on us to recognize it, not hide from it.
This ought to be the state's Pearl Harbor moment.
Lex Anteinternet: Intellectual disconnect. With everything on fire, will people wake up?
Lex Anteinternet: Intellectual disconnect. With everything on fire, ...:
Intellectual disconnect. With everything on fire, will people wake up?
The weather report for today from the Trib:
A headline from Cowboy State Daily:
‘It Was Armageddon’: Eastern Wyoming Community Evacuated By Wildfire
Some headlines from today's Trib:
And a common political theme in Wyoming, albeit here from a doomed attempt at displacing the current incumbent Senator, with the incumbent right below him:
Wyomingites claim, and very often really do, have a deep love of the wildness of our state and nature. And yet, at the same time, the economy of the state, and its reliance upon extractive industries, causes a deep loyalty to the fossil fuel industries, beyond that, very ironically, which those industries have themselves.
Speak to any of the more knowledgeable and powerful people within the coal or petroleum industries, and you will not tend to get debate on anthropocentric caused global warming. They accept it, and frankly accept that they're going away in their current forms. They will debate how rapidly they can go away, with quite a bit of variance between that. Many in the industry are realpolitik practitioners in regard to energy, accepting the decline as inevitable, but cynical about how fast it can occur. Some, however, are nearly "green" in their view, and see a rapid phase out.
It's at the wellhead level, and the coal shovel level, that you have those who can't accept it. The same people will look forward to elk season, but can't imagine that what's happening is happening, and that it's bad for the elk. But then many of the same people imagine themselves being outdoorsman while planted on the back of an ATV.
Politicians, some genuine, and some not, emphasize the wallet end of this. "America needs", "America depends", etc. Well, it's passing away.
Passing away with it may be the town of Heartville Wyoming, but not due to economics, but due to catastrophic fire.
Human memories are flawed, and that's where we get into false debates and the The Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. The flipside, interestingly enough, is the Imposter Syndrome, in which highly competent people imagine that they are not.
Combine the Dunning-Kruger effect with poor memories, poor education and dislocation from your native place, and you get what we have here.
Add in economic self interest, and well you really get what we have here.
I'll hear all the time that the weather today is the same as it always was. BS. My memory on these things is good, and I can recall that 100F days were so rare when I was a kid that entire years went by in which we didn't experience them. Nor did we experience constant year after year fires like this. Indeed, as a National Guardsmen I was sent to two fires, back when resources were so thin on this topic, as they weren't really needed, that this was routine for the Guard.
Two fires in six years.
I've never heard of a Wyoming town being evacuated for a fire until now.
Yes, fires have always occurred, as the naysayers will note, but not so often and not like this.
And to add to it, whether Wyomingites want to believe it or not, coal in particular is on its way out. It simply is. 500,000 people can sit in a corner of the country saying "nuh uh", but that's not going to make it change. It's been on the way out for a century or more:
Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry
Petroleum is less vulnerable than coal, in part because of the often forgotten petrochemical industry. A friend of mine who was a geologist and and an engineer was of the view that the consumption of petroleum for ground transportation ought to be phased out simply for that reason, to save it for petrochemicals. But big changes are coming here too. Electric vehicles are coming in, like it or not. The switch to green, and all that means, some good and some bad, is coming.
Denying that and maintaining that the rest of the country must pretend its 1973 isn't going to change that.
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, July 26, 1924. Camping and plowing.
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, July 26, 1924. Other around the world f...: Argentinian pilot Pedro Zanni and mechanic Felipe Beltrame began their rather belated attempt to fly around the world. Larry Estridge became...
The weekly magazines were out.
The Saturday Evening Post with a girl who had a scouting uniform of some type, or perhaps was wearing an oddly colored representation of Navy white shirt, with red instead of blue.
Country Gentleman had a classic of a draft team.
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Cutting Hay
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Cutting Hay: Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Cutting Hay : The Big Horn Basin usually gets three cuttings of alfalfa a summer. Mid July, right b...
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Cutting Hay
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Cutting Hay: The Big Horn Basin usually gets three cuttings of alfalfa a summer. Mid July, right before the fair and barley harvest, is a good time to kn...
Lex Anteinternet: The 2024 Election, Part XXII. The Populist Party v. The Democrats and the Co-opting of American Populism. The sic transit gloria mundi et reductio ad absurdum edition. Hawk tuah.
Lex Anteinternet: The 2024 Election, Part XXII. The Populist Party v...:
The 2024 Election, Part XXII. The Populist Party v. The Democrats and the Co-opting of American Populism. The sic transit gloria mundi et reductio ad absurdum edition. Hawk tuah.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
July 17, 2024
The Republican National Convention is into day three as of the time of this writing. It's a populist party now, and as others have been pointing out, it's shedding values, as all populist movements do, as rapidly as it once claimed them.
Populist movements are famously shallow, having no real political thesis behind them other than that the "will of the people" is right, because it must be. For this reason, they're also nearly universally co opted in the end by other movements. The American Populist movement of the late 19th Century was absorbed by the Progressive movement, which had a real thesis behind it. American Populist who hadn't been absorbed by first the Republicans of the Theodore Roosevelt era or by Democrats following the rise of Woodrow Wilson, ended up various far left wing movement of the 20s and 30s, including American Socialism and Communism, which again had a deeper thesis. The Communist road had already been laid for Populist in Russia, where populist movements against the Crown in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries ended up in revolution, with the revolution being co opted by the Bolsheviks, who again had a real thesis, and would absorb and destroy populism in their country. In the German Weimar Republic street level populsits, and they're always street level, would gravitate towards the KDP and the NADSP, with the Nazi's, which had a heavily populist element which again was amazingly think, winning out in the end. Post war debates on whether the Nazi Party was socialist or fascist miss the reality entirely, it was populist, making it the most successful populist party, in terms of gaining control of a major nation, of all times.
Because populism is shallow, in the end it only reflect the thin surface of a populace's culture, and often the worst elements of it, once it is allowed to establish itself. German populism yielded to insane racial theories and hatred and worshipped with fanatical loyalty the German Volk in the form of a single man, Adolf Hitler. Southern populism of the 20th Century had, as a claimed feature, a deep love of culture and Protestantism, but it also featured a profound prejudice against anyone who was not a white Protestant.
And so we've arrived at that point.
Donald Trump's rise was adopted by and backed by Christian Nationalist, who just held a convention within the last two weeks. Open about their desire to establish the United States as an exclusively Christian (Protestant) nation, they've seen Trump as a Cyrus the Great who is their divinely appointed ally. In the wake of last week's assassination attempt by a young registered Republican who, in numerous ways, demonstrated that he didn't know diddly about marksmanship, rank and file and more elite members of the movement have declared that Trump was saved by Devine Providence.
That may in fact be true, but it's worth remembering that Adolf Hitler was the target of 42 known assassination plots, more than one of which went right to the edge of success. It's also worth remembering that God does in fact work in mysterious ways, and God's acts don't necessarily corelate with human desires, and life may in fact be preserved for reasons we don't really grasp, but which do not necessarily equal our political goals.
At any rate, the Republican Convention in fact with numerous prayers offered by Christian clerics, including Catholic ones, who should be cautious about Christian Nationalism. But it's worth noting that it also opened by a prayer from a conservative Sikh female lawyer. I'm not saying that's not admirable, but the hardcore Protestant backers of a man who last year said that he would keep out of the country people who did not adhere to "our religion" are now scrambling to suggest that this isn't contrary to their view.
And beyond that, an opening speaker was one Amber Rose, about whom I know nothing other than that she has a pornographic past and present, and who does not seem to stand for anything that MAGA populist claim to is revealing. Essentially, she evokes the very type of "wokeism" that actually did give rise to the movement in significant ways, as people instinctively reacted to what they knew to be contrary to common sense and morality.
The point, therefore, at which a populist movement is absorbed into something else has been reached. The "conservative" element of populism has been boiled out. Now the Republican Party and the Populist movement stands for one thing only, Donald Trump. Almost anything that a person thinks Trump stands for is now suspect in additional. We already know, for example, a movement which was deeply opposed to abortion in a party that had been deeply opposed to abortion, has abandoned that plank, as Trump is wishy washy on the whole thing.
Not that there weren't signs of this already.
Nearly coincident with the conference on Christian Nationalism, the "Hawk tuah Girl" rose to temporary fame regarding her TikTok interview on engaging in fellatio. Deeply antithetical to Christian morality, she showed up shortly thereafter featured in Daisy Duke's al la Playboy helicopter scene from Apocalypse Now. This past week, as already noted, the RNC gave a prime speaking slot to a pro-abortion feminist and self-proclaimed slut whose claim to fame is having sex with rappers. It turns out, accordingly, that lots of rank and file MAGA adherents don't really have a concern for traditional morality, indeed, they're okay with immorality as long as its fairly conventional, or in the case of same sex marriage, with Don Jr. claims Don Sr. has always been in favor of, in spite of what he said post Obergefell, it's become conventional as our memories only stretch back to last week.
Hawk tuah.
Well, this isn't that surprising. Much of the "Christian" and "moral" nature of the current populist was paper thin. Donald Trump is a serial polygamist who took rides on the Lolita Express. Lots of ardent populists saluting Christian Nationalism have long ignored Matthew 19:9.
Sic transit gloria mundi et reductio ad absurdum.
Last edition:
The 2024 Election, Part XXI. The Refusal to Face Reality Edition.
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, July 6, 1974. Live from Lake Wobegon.
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, July 6, 1974. Live from Lake Wobegon.:
Saturday, July 6, 1974. Live from Lake Wobegon.
Minnesota Public Radio broadcast the first episode of A Prairie Home Companion. It had an audience of only twelve.
Last edition:
Saturday, June 29, 1974. Art and politics.
Labels: 1970s, 1974, Argentina, Art, British Empire, Colonialism, Dancing, Diplomacy, French Empire, Mexico, New Hebrides, Richard Nixon
Going Feral: Emergency FRS/GMRS Channels
Going Feral: Emergency FRS/GMRS Channels:
You can read more about that here:
Colorado specifically asks that people not program in a privacy code.
Emergency FRS/GMRS Channels
I thought I'd posted something on this, but I hadn't.
If you spend quite a bit of time in the outback, you should pack along an FRS/GMRS capable radio, or at least a FRS one. I.e., a "walkie talkie".
I like radios, and it's really easy to geek people out on the topic, or for that matter to get arrogant in regard to them, which is a frequent problem in radio communities. What I'm going to start off noting is something that goes down the rabbit hole in GMRS communities, but its easy to set yourself up with these sorts of small handheld radios. Midland in particular makes good sets for regular people.
Everyone has seen these sorts of radios, and a lot of children actually use them, particularly the FRS ones. When you buy a "bubble pack" radio set at the sporting goods store, that's what you are getting.
Okay, for some technicalities. From the FCC website:
The Family Radio Service (FRS) is a private, two-way, short-distance voice and data communications service for facilitating family and group activities. The most common use for FRS channels is short-distance, two-way voice communications using small hand-held radios that are similar to walkie-talkies. The service is licensed-by-rule so the general public can use the devices without having to obtain a license and channel sharing is achieved through a listen-before-talk etiquette.Other services that allow similar communications include the CB Radio Service, General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) and the Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS).
The FRS is authorized 22 channels in the 462 MHz and 467 MHz range, all of which are shared with General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) which requires an individual license for use.
That's frankly a little deceptive, for reasons we'll discuss in a moment.
A lot of the the radios you buy now have the GMRS bands on them, and lots of people, as we'll see, buy GMRS radios intentionally, which require a license, as noted. Regarding GMRS;
The General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) is a licensed radio service that uses channels around 462 MHz and 467 MHz. The most common use of GMRS channels is for short-distance, two-way voice communications using hand-held radios, mobile radios and repeater systems. In 2017, the FCC expanded GMRS to also allow short data messaging applications including text messaging and GPS location information.
Services that provide functionality similar to GMRS include the Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS), the Family Radio Service (FRS) and the Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS).
The GMRS is available to an individual for short-distance two-way communications to facilitate the activities of licensees and their immediate family members. Each licensee manages a system consisting of one or more transmitting units (stations.) The rules for GMRS limit eligibility for new GMRS system licenses to individuals in order to make the service available to personal users. (Some previously licensed non-individual systems are allowed to continue using GMRS.)
In 2017, the FCC updated the GMRS by allotting additional interstitial channels in the 467 MHz band, increased the license term from 5 to 10 years, allowed transmission of limited data applications such as text messaging and GPS location information and made other updates to the GMRS rules to reflect modern application of the service.
I"m not going to bother with MURS, which you don't run into that often.
GMRS is a far more capable two-way radio system than CB is. If CB's are down in their legally restricted power range, they really only have a about a three-mile range, which is also pretty common range wise for FRS. GMRS varies by terrain and is line of site, so it can be quite short as well, although it can be quite long. I've hit a hand held gmrs from a 5 Watt gmrs radio from a distance of 20 miles away, and the other day I was picking up the local repeater from over 30 miles away when I actually quite listening to it.
Channel 3 is a FRS channel that doesn't require the GMRS license, and it's the channel that seems to be getting adopted for emergency radio use. Colorado Search and Rescue has adopted it:
You can read more about that here:
FRS3 For Colorado Backcountry
Wyoming Search and Rescue has as well, but there's an added wrinkle with them. Riffing off of the widely held weird belief in Wyoming that the area code is somehow cool, they've added the suggestion that people program in privacy code 7.
Colorado specifically asks that people not program in a privacy code.
Privacy codes are really easy to program into any of these radios. It's just done with the keys. What a privacy code does is filter out all the radio traffic not using it, so if you have it programmed in, you'll only hear transmissions using it. People not using the code can hear everything, but they can't talk to you.
As noted, I like radios and I carry a hand held Midland GMRS radio (usually a Midland) out in the sticks all the time. Both of my regular 4x4s have vehicle mounted GMRS radios as well. One of those is the most powerful one you can have by law, which means it should be able to broadcast at distance, and it also allows the user to program in "split tones", which are useful for privately maintained repeaters. Northern Colorado is jam packed with a really good repeater system, and it now extends as far north as Cheyenne which is linked into it. The Torrington area has a repeater as well, but I've never been able to hit it. Casper has a very good repeater which is part of the GMRS Live system, so through net linkage, you can hit all the way up into Montana on it.
Not that most people want to do any of that. But the recommendations are really good ones. The hand held radios can be bought fairly inexpensively (although you can get a really expensive one if you wish) and if you are lost, or hurt yourself out in the sticks, and much of the sticks in Wyoming is without cell service, it could be a life saver.
Going Feral: Report dead wild rabbits to Game and Fish
Going Feral: Report dead wild rabbits to Game and Fish:
Report dead wild rabbits to Game and Fish
Report dead wild rabbits to Game and Fish
Wyomingites are being asked to keep a lookout for dead rabbits in their yards, rural property and other outdoor areas. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is collecting wild rabbit carcasses for Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus2 testing, known as RHDV2. While not found in Wyoming yet, the disease has been identified in neighboring states. Testing rabbits is key to monitoring the disease spread.
RHDV2 is a fatal disease of rabbits and hares. An estimated 35-50% of infected wild rabbits succumb to the disease.
Samantha Allen, Game and Fish state wildlife veterinarian, said all of Wyoming’s rabbits and hares are susceptible — that includes game and nongame species like cottontail rabbits, jack rabbits and potentially, pygmy rabbits. Domestic rabbits are also at risk; however, other domestic pets and livestock are not at risk from the disease.
The first indication of RHDV2 infection in rabbits is dead animals.
“Any rabbit could become infected with the disease - so it could be a cottontail living in your yard or the one you see while hiking,” said Allen. “Please report any dead rabbits you find. Testing these carcasses is the only way to know if the disease is in Wyoming.”
The disease has been confirmed in California, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado.
RHDV2 does not pose a threat to humans, but rabbits carry other diseases which can — like tularemia and plague. The public is advised not to touch or pick up any dead wild rabbits. Rather, note the location and call the Game and Fish Wildlife Health Lab at (307) 745-5865 or the nearest regional office. Game and Fish personnel will evaluate the situation, and make plans to collect the rabbit.
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