I wrote over at Whitepine today

Today's feature in the Strib focuses on the housing crisis and Wright County, where subdivisions now sit empty, housing auctions go unattended, and blame is thrown around like monkey dung. We have seen this before, if anyone remembers, and it was not long ago taxpayers footed another big bill for speculators and bankers: The S & L crisis was like this, a product of deregulation, speculation and that great American past time, public subsidy of private risk, or welfare for the rich evil cynics like myself would call it. Anyone ( with a rational brain)watching the goings on in the suburbs three years ago would have wondered how long you could ride that horse, but doomsayers or long-term rationalists are never welcome when the money hangs like meat on a chain. The dogs will tear you apart just for barking. There are some rules in life I still try to live by. If a salesman says don't worry, that means hold on to your wallet. If a financier or banker says we need to de-regulate to free up the economy, it means my buddies and I want a higher rate of return for doing nothing, and we want the public to bail out us investors when it goes bad; so sayeth Adam Smith. Unlike most, I will not blame ordinary people. Most are trained dogs believing whatever crap is told to them throughout their lives; god is in the heavens, corporations love you, and the good life of the suburbs awaits all if you stay away from those nasty dark people and keep your teeth white. That and they want a decent home, a job and health care, and they pray and hope if they play the game right, that will happen, for they have been told that. There is more to this than a few mortgage bankers and irresponsible owners trying to speculate. It is fundamental to what they have been doing for the last 35 years: Remove the brakes from the New Deal reforms that tried to correct speculative bubbles which are almost always driven more by investors than markets. There is another aspect to this, and anyone can see it if they look. Suburban development is not stable, does not build places that people actually want to live for the long term, is a waste of resources, and is probably the craziest thing we have ever done. As fuel becomes more expensive, and it will, the giant truck we are all riding to the supercenter will become more and more expensive, and there we will sit locked in communities without a heart, 20 miles from nowhere. For the area, as we now see potential development, I will remind everyone what happened before; just look at the numbers for 1978 then for 1988, remember what happened well, and then as people race to split the parcels as the boomers move to town, get ready to ride. There is only one long term project proposal of real size; the rest are mines lasting only 20 years, or smaller projects not really having a dent. 20 years, and we are left with a big nasty mess and overbuilt infrastructure...AGAIN. And, like the last time, most of the money will be blown on gas toys and beer, with 60 inch screens added in this time....and then they will whine when the house won't sell.....

Two Biology related stories caught my eye this morning. First, a moose calf that was hanging around Duluth was found to have brainworm, the common name for the infection shown above, the scientific name being parelaphostrongylus tenuis. It is a natural parasite of the whitetail deer and does not hurt them, but when it infects Moose or Caribou, it is fatal. The worm crawls around inside the brain making holes as it goes. Often, as whitetail numbers increase due to landscape or climate change, the number of Moose goes down, and this is one of the culprits. The other is the Wisconsin Conservation Congress voting their desire for a wolf hunt to "keep the population within management objectives". That sentence compares to a French deconstructionist for lacking meaning. What it really means is this. The wolf population of Wisconsin is not a " management success" for their DNR. They did not reintroduce them, nor manage them, for reintroduction would have raised howls(yes, irony) and bellows from the slack jawed morons that populate most of the U.S. There is an area on the east side of Minnesota bordering Wisconsin that has very few roads or people, and as wolves expanded within the state, they moved into and through that area, eventually populating Wisconsin and the U.P. Now, there are actual packs, oh my, and they might take the occasional hunting dog, calf, lamb or hopefully, several of the millions of deer roaming Wisconsin( the state's deer numbers are so far out of whack it is a biological emergency). It shows a common misperception, that "sportsmen" (hunting is not a sport, it is a method of getting food) are knowledgeable. They are often not. As the former director of one states Deer management section said, " the average hunter in____ wants to sit on a stump for an hour, have a deer walk by, shoot it, then go back to sitting in his shack". Witness the trucks loaded with equipment every year, with entire fleets of atv's towed behind trucks loaded with enough gear and fuel to outfit a company of troops. I once did research in Wisconsin, and as it approached bear season, I would have hounds show up in my plots confused at my presence as the bear hunters worked their dogs. Often, they would have better telemetry equipment than researchers. What many hunters want is the equivalent of a canned hunt and a trophy to bs about, not the actual experience of hunting. It is a fast food equivalent of the natural experience. My concern is for allowing at least some natural processes to occur, and for species other than americanis modernis be allowed to roam and live free, and this includes humans. For more info on Moose decline in Minnesota, go here

The political economy of food.

Of all things, I bought half of a pig from my cousin's farm a while back, cut and wrapped of course. Yesterday I enjoyed the Ham with real au gratin potatoes , and as we sat enjoying the delicious, juicy ham ( enough already, I know) the difference in taste was obvious. It had some, and it was good. But so were many other things about said swine meat. It did not travel 1500 miles, the average distance alot travels to get here. It did not grow in a confinement barn with 2000 other pigs breathing ammonia all day( probably why it tastes good), and it helped a local farmer I know.This my ham during production ( not really) So for all of you today, here is a lesson in where bacon comes from

This was bare grass yesterday. Only a few spots of snow in the shade. And now this. Even for a dedicated snow-a-holic skier, the dreams of mountain biking had infected me, and now....Too sticky to really enjoy skiing...Aaaahhhhgggg.

So I have been remiss. I did not realize it has been two months since a post. But life has been busy. I have relocated to the Iron Range, a place I'd never thought I'd return to. I even live in one of the cities, and not the country to the north as I planned. And it has been an adventure, even for someone originally from the area. No coffee places with wifi open in evening hours within 15 miles. Alcoholism and other addictions run rampant. Teenagers with a look that says " get me out of here!". And those that stay are well, hmm, sometimes frightening. Mudder culture is everywhere, and generally amongst the males it is alcohol mixed with gasoline for enlightenment. There are entire missing age cohorts, especially gen x and y. Ant then this...the local paper...
. I hope the tag I want people to see shows up. You can guess from the tone of this vile piece of greasy fishwrap the editor's mentality. He berates the local school for apparently joining in this. According to him, and most of the right wing nutballs of his ilk ( I know, it is a redundancy), this is pushing the " homosexual agenda", whatever that is. I suppose that means they demand not to be assaulted, verbally abused and, oh my, to be treated like everyone else. Obviously a conspiracy of grand proportions. Last week, I spent the day at a conference where local officials were discussing planning. The question always is " how can we attract younger people to live and work here?". The blame has always been the economy, with some justification. But there are other components; namely, social life, the local culture, the land itself, etc...etc... As one of the local mayor's said, " if you want barriers to change, I will give you about 200 names and addresses to start. "This is a perfect example; The reptile who runs this paper is part of the problem, and so are many others like him. It is no longer the same world, and hoping for some bizarro place populated by happily working, white, nutball christians is not going to help your cities grow. Neither will holding on to mudder culture, or celebrating the digging of repulsive giant holes:large hole. Hey...most of the world thinks nature and art are pretty and are not attracted to toxic waste sites and industrial brownfields. They also do not like insular people who aren't friendly. I will not even speak of the heifer like women...I will save that for my next post after the angry replies are done.