Author: Kate

Reader Tips

Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips is a short educational film about woodpeckers. Did you know that when a woodpecker is foraging for bugs it pecks just once or twice, but when it hammers loudly in rhythmic bursts, it’s not looking for food?

“By far the most often-heard drumming and pecking by woodpeckers has to do with communication, not feeding. Each species has a distinctive rhythmic pattern that it hammers out, often choosing hollow spaces that act as amplification chambers, broadcasting territorial claims far and wide. If a woodpecker drums repeatedly on your house, it’s likely using your dwelling as an amplifier, not as a grocery store.”

That explains a lot. Incidentally, anyone who has ever been awoken early in the morning by what sounds like either a brass door-knocker or an old-fashioned typewriter might be interested to hear the territory-claiming sound made by the yellow-bellied Sapsucker at 3:07.
From the people behind Peterson Field Guides, here’s a brief introduction to our feathered friends, the Woodpeckers.
You are invited to provide your Reader Tips in the comments.

More Pavilions At Folkfest

Hospital Rules: No smoking, turn off your cell phone, and observe Sharia law.

A couple is facing a $750 hospital bill after they had to leave a ward in Kingston General Hospital’s maternity ward because a Muslim woman was breastfeeding her newborn.
John Kennedy said he and another man were also forbidden from using the sink in the shared bathroom to dampen cloths so they could clean their babies.
He and his wife and the other couple were moved out of the room on religious grounds that were made clear to him by medical staff on the floor, who said unrelated men are forbidden from being in the room while the Muslim woman was breastfeeding.

Why Do They Call it a Justice System?

Pickton:

During that violent struggle, the woman said she slashed Pickton’s jugular vein and was able to escape, flagging down a passing car for help.
She had lost three litres of blood and had no pulse when she arrived at Royal Columbian Hospital with stab wounds to the upper chest, the abdomen, hands and arms. The woman, who was then 30, remained unconscious in hospital for four days.
Pickton, who also lost three litres of blood that evening, drove himself to Eagle Ridge Hospital, and was then transferred to Royal Columbian. The two stabbing victims were in separate operating rooms when a handcuff key was found in the pocket of Pickton’s pants. It was taken to the woman’s room and used to unlock the cuffs dangling from her wrist.
Pickton was charged with attempted murder, assault with a weapon and forcible confinement following the incident, but the charges were eventually stayed because the Crown considered the woman too unstable to testify in court at the time.

Not Waiting For The Asteroid


In raising several questions about this issue and the economics of nuclear power, the article failed to point out, as it should have, that the study was prepared for an environmental advocacy group, which, according to its Web site, is committed to ‘‘tackling the accelerating crisis posed by climate change — along with the various risks of nuclear power.’’ The article also failed to take account of other studies that have come to contrasting conclusions, or to include in the mix of authorities quoted any who elaborated on differing analyses of the economics of energy production.

h/t huck

Reader Tips

Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips sees Chico Marx taking his fingers out for a lighthearted stroll on the piano – note his distinctive right hand technique – before handing over the stool to a mayhem-making Harpo, who then switches to his harp, in this musical vignette from the 1935 Marx Brothers film A Night At The Opera.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

Now Is The Time At SDA When We Juxtapose!

North Pole, 1959:
“the Skate found open water both in the summer and following winter. We surfaced near the North Pole in the winter through thin ice less than 2 feet thick.”
NYT, 2000:

The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday. At least for the time being, an ice-free patch of ocean about a mile wide has opened at the very top of the world, something that has presumably never before been seen by humans and is more evidence that global warming may be real and already affecting climate.

… the details.

“For those who do not know,”

… Paul Krugman is one of the few who still claim that Keynesian progressivism is the answer to America’s (and Europe’s) problems, not their cause. He repeats that claim many times each month. Amid these repeated expressions of his “progressive” faith, he now also repeatedly expresses grim despair because his progressive policy prescriptions are being accepted less and less in the public square, even by the Obama administration.
Krugman is an academic. He has never run a company. He has never created a job. The closest contact he evidently ever had to “business” was as an adviser to Enron, where (in his own words) he was paid $50,000 to help build Enron’s “image.”
This, perhaps, explains the dozen or so points that Krugman makes over and over. Here are a few: Obama’s stimulus was too small. Debt is good. Austerity is bad. Deflation is coming. Ken Rogoff, Greg Mankiw, Alberto Alesina (all at Harvard), and other serious economic scientists do not understand economics as well as he does. Those who do not agree with him are “mass delusional.” And perhaps Krugman’s favorite line: “I was right, of course.”
Befitting his ideology, Krugman has only one policy to propose, regardless of topic: Transfer more resources from the discipline and dynamism of markets to the inefficiency and cronyism of government.

And then his commentors weighed in.
h/t Maz2

Breaking news: no-go zones on American soil

…but only if you’re the President:

Over the weekend, it…emerged that for the first time in his six-year national political career, Mr Obama is being told by White House aides that there are certain areas of the country where he is being advised not to visit because his approval rating and the local political environment is too hostile. The locations of the areas have not been disclosed.

Democrats seem to know precisely where those areas are:

During a visit by Mr Obama to Atlanta, Georgia, on Monday, the Democrat candidate for governor was ‘not available’ to meet the president and campaigned elsewhere in the state.

Reader Tips

There is no closer bond on earth than that between a dog and its owner. Tonight’s offering en route to the Tips shows footage of a woman having a myocardial infarction. Fortunately for her, she’s surrounded by her loyal dogs – Puppyboy, Ginger, Jimmy and Hedda – who spring into action. Without further ado, here’s Merrill Markoe’s short film Le Crise (“The Crisis.”)
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

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