The Rolleiflex 2.8D
18 hours ago
Partly collected thoughts.
Garden - May 20, 2012, a set on Flickr.
Damaged by pests, weather and deer, this is the first flower in two years. I don't remember its name. Perhaps Tahitian Sunrise - but it doesn't match pictures of that on the web. Anyway, the rose itself vanished the next day, likely eaten by a deer. The plant remains, but is sickly and weak.
"By 1900, deforestation and unregulated hunting had reduced deer populations in the Eastern United States to tiny remnant clusters surviving in remote sanctuaries. But subsequent protective laws and aggressive habitat management allowed deer to bounce back.To this day, wildlife managers slice intact forests into sunny woodlots that maximize the number of deer and the frequency of encounters between deer and hunters. Private landowners are encouraged by wildlife agencies to crisscross their forest acreage with tasty plantings of clover and wheat in support of what is now a burgeoning population of perhaps 50 million white-tailed deer — in some places as many as 75 deer per square mile.....Less appreciated, though, is how these millions of deer are quietly eating every palatable leaf within their reach across the eastern forests of North America. That’s very bad news for migratory birds."
-----This is best accomplished by allowing natural predators like weasels, coyotes, foxes, and owls to do the job. And the best way to increase their numbers is to maximize the size of forest patches.
A three-year experiment in tick control in two areas of Long Island — Shelter Island and western portions of Fire Island — has shown encouraging results.
How it all ties in to the losses at J.P. Morgan:Researchers from Cornell University installed and monitored dozens of “four-poster” feeding stations, which lure deer to a bin baited with corn and rigged with rollers soaked with a tick-killing pesticide, permethrin. When a deer rubs against the rollers, ticks die by the thousands. One station can treat all the deer in about 100 acres.New York had banned four-poster devices because feeding wild deer makes them congregate, which increases the risk of spreading chronic wasting disease. The Department of Environmental Conservation approved the experiment for these confined areas, where Lyme infections were severe and chronic wasting disease unknown.
Ever since JPMorgan Chase disclosed a multibillion-dollar trading loss this month, the central mystery has been how a bank known for its skill at risk management could err so badly.
As early as 2010, the senior banker who has been blamed for the debacle, Ina Drew, began to lose her grip on the bank’s chief investment office, according to current and former traders. She had guided the bank through some of the most rugged moments of the 2008 financial crisis, earning the trust of Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive, in the process.But after contracting Lyme disease in 2010, she was frequently out of the office for a critical period, when her unit was making riskier bets, and her absences allowed long-simmering internal divisions and clashing egos to come to the fore, the traders said.The morning conference calls Ms. Drew had presided over devolved into shouting matches between her deputies in New York and London, the traders said. That discord in 2010 and 2011 contributed to the chief investment office’s losing trades in 2012, the current and former bankers said.
Cherokee Tribal membership is based upon direct Cherokee ancestors who 1. agreed to accept a tribal roll number and 2. dissolve the Cherokee Nation through the Dawes Commission, 3. accept a small allotment of land, 4. give up their religion under the adjunct American Indian Religious Crimes Codes of 1883. Cherokee Nation members who refused to accept the dissolution, take their small allotment and give up their religion did not have roll numbers. Their ancestors are not eligible for tribal membership and after the Bush I, "American Indian Arts and Crafts act," (limited to enrolled members), must call themselves of "Cherokee Descent" and cannot market their work as Cherokee, nor are they eligible for traditional religious approval conferred by a new Cherokee Nation that is largely converted.This is a shameful record, and not very different from the all-devouring Christianity in Europe and Islam elsewhere.
Elizabeth Warren was 23 when the American Congress finally gave American Indians the right to practice their religion (1978) You have no idea what that meant to us. I was 37 at the time. But all over America, native children were harassed for returning to their faith and their culture. They were told that there were no longer traditional Indian religions and dress and that real Indians didn't dress or worship that way anymore.
The Bechdel Test, sometimes called the Mo Movie Measure or Bechdel Rule is a simple test which names the following three criteria: (1) it has to have at least two women in it {who have names}, (2) who talk to each other, about (3) something besides a man.
An intriguing recent book by Columbia's Stuart Firestein (a neurologist, but he has been teaching a broader course on this subject) titled Ignorance: How it Drives Science posits that it is not the acquisition of facts, but the ability to know what one does not know that drives the spirit of inquiry, and thus makes any progress possible. Naturally, by this measure there will be absolutely no innovation coming out of India. And that in fact is the case by and large.