"Men have never loved one another much, for reasons we can readily understand: Man is not a lovable animal."

Nothing left to defend ? Pt. II Babylon....

"The rancher strings barbed wire across the range, drills wells and bulldozes stock ponds everywhere, drives off the elk and antelope and bighorn sheep, poisons coyotes and prairie dogs, shoots eagle and bear and cougar on sight, supplants the native bluestem and grama grass with tumbleweed, cow shit, cheat grass, snakeweed, anthills, poverty weed, mud and dust and flies - and then leans back and smiles broadly at the TV cameras and tells us how much he loves the West."

-Edward Abbey

April Qualifier ......

And qualify he did......

100 shoes.......

pits across the state.....

results in two weeks........

Don't do it..........

The world is older and bigger than we are. This is a hard truth for some folks to swallow." -- Edward Abbey

"But love of the wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need - if only we had eyes to see."

Weekend Perambulation.............

maybe later.......

The first of the broad leather straps went around his chest and pulled him back into the chair. The second and third straps tied his forearms to the wooden arms. Only when his arms were buckled were the special handcuffs removed.

More straps followed. Two straps went over his wrists. One went around his waist and pinched his stomach. Another went over his lap and caused his thighs to bulge. It was beginning to feel like a Houdini stunt. The ankle straps went on last. When they were secure the manacles were removed from his legs.

An electrician kneeled before him as if he were going to wash his feet. The electrician parted his right trouser lag and strapped a leather anklet to his calf. The anklet was lined with cold copper and tied so tight it cut off the blood to his foot. Maybe they were being sadistic, or maybe it was just their lack of experience, but every restraint was skintight.

The electrician connected the polished electrodes to the anklet, Glancing down, the thick black cord snaked away behind the chair. It looked like a deadly water moccasin. The ritual continued. They placed a microphone before him.

"Would you like to make a statement before the will of the people is carried out?".....

The guards tilted his shaved head back at an uncomfortable angle. They shoved a mouthpiece between his teeth. "Bite down on this real hard." They fastened a fat leather chin strap around his jaw, so taut it was almost choking him. The head was now locked firmly into the wooden headrest.........

Nothing left to defend ?

WALK

Move at a regular and fairly slow pace by lifting and setting down each foot in turn, never having both feet off the ground at once.

A going to walk the dogs, Brandon won the horseshoe tournment with high ringer average, got a new tattoo fuckin' Saturday night music post...

Oh yeah....the weather is perfect and I've had a couples of brews.....

Here is a picture of some roses from my rose garden....just for shits and giggles....

Is The 5-Second Rule True?

A common superstition, the five-second rule states that food dropped on the ground will not be significantly contaminated with bacteria if it is picked up within five seconds of being dropped. Some may earnestly believe this assertion, whereas other people employ the rule as a polite social fiction that will allow them to still eat a lightly-contaminated piece of food, despite the potential reservations of their peers.

The God

A bronze statue of the Hindu deity, Shiva, the personifaction of calm, is irritated by a pesky fly and comes to life in order to rid himself of it. But in his increasingly frustated attempts, Shiva causes himself more and more problems until...

The Traveling Stones of Pahranagat Valley, 1867

Some years ago, a prospector who had been roaming through the Pahranagat Mountains, the wildest and most sterile portion of southeastern Nevada, brought back with him a great curiosity in the shape of a number of traveling stones.

The stones were almost perfectly round, the majority of them as large as a hulled walnut, and very heavy, being of an irony nature. When scattered about on the floor, on a table, or other level surface, within two or three feet of each other, they immediately began traveling toward a common center, and then huddled up in a bunch like a lot of eggs in a nest.

A single stone removed to a distance of a yard, upon being released, at once started off with wonderful and somewhat comical celerity to rejoin its fellows; but if taken away four or five feet, it remained motionless.

The man who was in possession of these traveling stones said that he found them in a region of country that, though comparatively level, is nothing but bare rock. Scattered about in this rocky plain are a great number of little basins, from a few feet to two or three rods in diameter, and it is in the bottom of these basins that the rolling stones are found.

In the basins they are seen from the size of a pea to five or six inches in diameter. These curious pebbles appeared to be formed of a loadstone or magnetic iron ore.

The Reaction

65 Million Years Ago The Dinosaurs Had A Bad Day…

What’s six miles wide and can end civilization in an instant? An asteroid — and there are lots of them out there. With humor and great visuals, Phil Plait enthralls the TEDxBoulder audience with all the ways asteroids can kill, and what we must do to avoid them.

the perplexed observer

64-Million-Year Controversy: Grand Canyon Age Debated

Since two researchers suggested last year that the Grand Canyon was carved 70 million years ago (much older than the consensus of 6 million years), a rousing debate over the canyon's true age has played out at scientific meetings, through email, and now, in the pages of a respected journal.

LiveScience

In the past, you've had to drive to get gas.

"At communities like this one [Mayflower, Arkansas] Exxon has revolutionized the way fuel gets to you. We'll pump that shit right down your driveway."

How to Avoid Pleurisy:

Never make love to a girl named Candy on the tailgate of a half-ton Ford pickup during a chill rain in April out on Grandview Point in San Juan County, Utah.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes

“And the wind blows, the dust clouds darken the desert blue, pale sand and red dust drift across the asphalt trails and tumbleweeds fill the arroyos. Good-bye, come again.

World’s First Perpetual Motion Machine?

Since at least the 12th century, man has sought to create a perpetual motion machine; a device that would continue working indefinitely without any external source of energy.

A large scientific contingent thinks such a device would violate the laws of thermodynamics, and is thus impossible.

Could it be that as a race, we don’t fully understand the laws of physics and such a device may indeed be possible? What would the ramifications be if we could actually build a perpetually moving device?

Norwegian artist and mathematician Reidar Finsrud is an outside the box thinker that has devised a machine that he believes achieves true perpetual motion.Take a look at the video below and see what you think.

disinformation

EagleCam gives viewers a live look at newly hatched eaglets

Baby eagles are hatching on Catalina Island, off the coast of southern California. A group called thePet Collective has set up a webcam near the nest so viewers can watch the eagles crack through their shells and take their first breaths.

Something to think about....

“In clear-cutting, he said, you clear away the natural forest, or what the industrial forester calls "weed trees," and plant all one species of tree in neat straight functional rows like corn, sorghum, sugar beets or any other practical farm crop. You then dump on chemical fertilizers to replace the washed-away humus, inject the seedlings with growth-forcing hormones, surround your plot with deer repellants and raise a uniform crop of trees, all identical. When the trees reach a certain prespecified height (not maturity; that takes too long) you send in a fleet of tree-harvesting machines and cut the fuckers down. All of them. Then burn the slash, and harrow, seed, fertilize all over again, round and round and round again, faster and faster, tighter and tighter until, like the fabled Malaysian Concentric Bird which flies in ever-smaller circles, you disappear up your own asshole.”

― Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang

Felis concolor

The cougar, Felis concolor, is also known as the mountain lion, puma or panther. The cougar is one of North America's largest cats and is recognized by its tawny color and long tail. Cougar kittens, or cubs, have blackish-brown spots on their body and dark rings on their tails that fade as they get older. Cougars are solitary animals, making them a rare sight for humans. They usually hunt alone and at night, ambushing their prey from behind. Typically, cougars kill their prey with a bite to the lower neck. After making a kill, a cougar often will take the carcass to the base of a tree and cover it with dirt, leaves or snow, saving it to eat later.

Cougars live all across Utah, from high in the Uinta Mountains to the dry southern Utah deserts. Cougars' main prey is deer, so cougars are often found close to deer. Cougars live up to 12 years in the wild but have lived up to 25 years in captivity. In the wild they face death through accidents, disease and large predators (including humans).

Safety In Cougar Country

Now that you mention it, I do recall something about a Petrified Man..........

A news report that appeared in the Territorial Enterprise (Virginia City, Nevada's leading newspaper) on October 4, 1862

A petrified man was found some time ago in the mountains south of Gravelly Ford. Every limb and feature of the stony mummy was perfect, not even excepting the left leg, which has evidently been a wooden one during the lifetime of the owner - which lifetime, by the way, came to a close about a century ago, in the opinion of a savan who has examined the defunct.

The body was in a sitting posture, and leaning against a huge mass of croppings; the attitude was pensive, the right thumb resting against the side of the nose; the left thumb partially supported the chin, the fore-finger pressing the inner corner of the left eye and drawing it partly open; the right eye was closed, and the fingers of the right hand spread apart.

This strange freak of nature created a profound sensation in the vicinity, and our informant states that by request, Justice Sewell or Sowell, of Humboldt City, at once proceeded to the spot and held an inquest on the body. The verdict of the jury was that "deceased came to his death from protracted exposure," etc.

The people of the neighborhood volunteered to bury the poor unfortunate, and were even anxious to do so; but it was discovered, when they attempted to remove him, that the water which had dripped upon him for ages from the crag above, had coursed down his back and deposited a limestone sediment under him which had glued him to the bed rock upon which he sat, as with a cement of adamant, and Judge S. refused to allow the charitable citizens to blast him from his position.

The opinion expressed by his Honor that such a course would be little less than sacrilege, was eminently just and proper. Everybody goes to see the stone man, as many as three hundred having visited the hardened creature during the past five or six weeks.

H.P. Lovecraft: Fear Of The Unknown

“With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds.”

Troy Knapp, Utah’s elusive ‘Mountain Man’ burglar, is arrested.

Utah's elusive mountain man may have inadvertently revealed his identity to two hunters, setting off a massive police operation to snare the man authorities said had roamed a vast mountainous area for six years, allegedly burglarizing and shooting up cabins.

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