A Christmas Story in Butter

The butter cow display at the 2018 Ohio State Fair honors "A Christmas Story:"

I like it, although I like all butter and butter sculptures.

Final Touches Being Made on Iowa State Fair Butter Cow

Des Moines Register:

T-minus six days until the gates swing open for the Iowa State Fair and Sarah Pratt puts some final touches on the face of the iconic butter cow, a tradition still going strong after 105 years. The hooves still need some detail work and she needs to finish the tail.
Five-gallon buckets of butter await in a cooler while giant blocks that just arrived need to be cut and kneaded to release water and make her medium more pliable.
But by the time Aug. 11 rolls around, Pratt will finalize her 11th version of Summer, the butter cow, as the official butter sculptor of the Iowa State Fair.
Pratt took over the sculpting duties in 2006 after 45-year veteran Norma “Duffy” Lyon retired. Pratt spent 15 years apprenticing under the first woman butter sculptor in the country, learning to use clay sculpting tools, even a dentist’s pick and mainly her own hands to take 1,000 pounds of butter and turn it into a cow...
Pratt, a former special education teacher, sketches out her sculptures in advance and welds together a metal and wire form on wood that gives her the basic structure of the piece. Already she completed a replica of the Starship Enterprise as well as Nyota Uhura and Spock, part of the butter cow companion exhibit. Capt. James T. Kirk’s metal frame already leans on his elbow in the commander’s seat and Dr. Leonard McCoy awaits his coating of butter.

I love me some butter sculptures and massive amounts of fried foods, with some creepy carnies thrown in for laughs.  Our county fair starts on Friday, and we've got the food and carnies, but lack the butter art.

Cavs Title Honored in Butter

Anything sculpted in butter is cool.

Love Is In The Fair

Love Is In The Fair from THE BITTER SOUTHERNER on Vimeo.

End of Harvest Weekend Links

Well, it was a very dry and record-breaking quick harvest.  Here are some interesting stories to check out this weekend:

A Better Game? - Sprint Football at Princeton - SBNation

Cutting Competitions: A Century Long Texas Tradition - VICE Sports

The Big Comeback of Benjamin Hochman - St. Louis Magazine

Meet Baseball's Least Exciting Announcer - Wall Street Journal

State Fairs Give New Repertoire a Whirl - Wall Street Journal

A Global Chill in Commodity Demand Hits America's Heartland - New York Times.  I was predicting this for a while.  It looks like it is here.

Cattle rustling U.S.A., where 'Rawhide' meets 'Breaking Bad' - Reuters

To Feed Humankind, We Need the Farms of the Future Today - Newsweek

Tasting The Balvenie's $50,000 Compendium of Ultra-Rare Whiskies - Bloomberg.  $50,000?

Last Word with Farmer-Author Wendell Berry - Modern Farmer

Cows - The Atlantic

Who Becomes a Nun in 2015? - Pacific Standard

Y'all, Norwegians Use The Word "Texas" As Slang To Mean "Crazy" - Texas Monthly.  Makes sense to me.

What Became of the Boy Who Shot His Sister Dead - The Trace

An Engineering Theory of the Volkswagen Scandal - The New Yorker.  I definitely see pride as a motivating factor.  My experience is that engineers hate executives who are dumber than them criticizing them for not coming up with a solution for some insoluble problem, and are then more likely to go corner-cutting to get around the bullshit demands.  If an exec tells them they can't use the urea solution to meet the emission standards, I can see them coming up with the defeat device to bullshit the dumbass boss.

How an F Student Became America's Most Prolific Inventor - Bloomberg.  I would love to sit in on those brainstorming sessions.

John Locke's Road to Serfdom - Jacobin

The Navy's Sitting Ducks - Bloomberg

New Northeast snowfall map shows Tug Hill is a bulls-eye each winter - Syracuse.com.  240 inches of snow a year?  Wow.

World Fair

World Fair from Aeon Video on Vimeo.

Labor Day Weekend Links

Around here, folks will be drinking beer, grilling out, watching the Ohio State game and bitching about how unions ruined America.  Here are some good stories to check out this weekend:

The World Series of Choctaw Stickball - SBNation

The Secrets of an NFL Locker Room - Rolling Stone.  Chris Kluwe on what he misses about football.

'Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck!': The twisted, true story of the drug-addled, beer guzzling hardcore punks who made the most popular T-shirts in Boston history - Grantland.  I hate Boston fans, but at least they aren't Yankees or Cubs fans.

Vin Scully as Human Time Capsule - James Fallows, and Look at all that's happened with the Dodgers during Vin Scully's tenure - SBNation

Farmers, USDA Gear Up For The Next Bird Flu Season - Modern Farmer. It will be interesting to see how well they handle it when they are better prepared for the outbreak.
 
Let's All Drool Over This Year's State Fair of Texas Food - Texas Monthly

A twofer from The Salt - How Big Egg Tried To Bring Down Little 'Mayo' (And Failed) and The Bloody Mary Meat Straw: An All-American Story

The paradox of soil - The Economist

This cloud-like, futuristic material has been sneaking its way into your life sine 1931 - Business Insider.  Never heard of it before.

The Revision of Steve Jobs - The Atlantic.  I was ahead of the curve on this one.

The Business of Seal Clubbing - Priceonomics.  Hey, the headline was clickbait for me.

How Singer Won the Sewing Machine War - Smithsonian.  For the patent lawyer in the family.

Meet the Designer Behind Four Decades of Star Wars Toys - Bloomberg.  The year I got the Millennium Falcon for Christmas, the decals got misplaced with the trash.  I really felt like I had an inferior product compared to my friends.  I was a severely anal-retentive child.  Since then, I've gone hard the other way.

The Death and Life of Atlantic City - The New Yorker.  On the shitshow that has been the Revel casino (h/t to my old boss).

That Which Divides Us - CityBeat.  A short history of segregation in Cincinnati, and its effects in the present day.  Also see, How the Federal Government Built White Suburbia - CityLab

That Sinking Feeling - Texas Observer.  On recently indicted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.  Reminds me of former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, another person with no business in statewide office, or any office for that matter (I did vote for that clown, unfortunately).

And Now I Have to Say Something About Kim Davis - The Stranger.  I've been tempted to post something about this clown show, but I couldn't without it boiling down to, "do your fucking job or quit, you Goddamn F*&%ing C^%$," so I refrained.

The United Slang of America - Slate

End of Church League Weekend Links

Well, last night the scrappy team of papists fell to the thugs of P-Hill to end our quest for a trophy and the greater glory of God, which means that in upcoming weeks I might actually get the links ready to publish on Saturday morning.  While defeat at the hands of the forces of evil takes a little bit of joy out of the week, I did find a few stories for your enjoyment:

Last Breaths in a Spanish Bullring - SBNation

This Is Our Youth: The Olympic-Industrial Complex and Katie Ledecky - Charles Pierce

European Soccer's Poor Little Rich Clubs - Wall Street Journal.  I'd like to see the Big Ten and the MAC promote and demote teams from one conference to the other.  B-G beats Indiana?  The next year, B-G is in the Big Ten while Indiana battles Ball State for conference superiority. That would be fun.

In Search Of A Drought Strategy, California Looks Down Under - The Salt

Eight Reasons Why the Iowa State Fair is The Best - Modern Farmer and Eating Healthy At The Iowa State Fair Means Salad On A Stick - The Salt.  Not for this guy.

When the Great Alpaca Bubble Burst - Priceonomics

Deere Profit Tumbles Amid Glut of Used Farm Equipment at Dealers - Wall Street Journal.  The next few years are going to be pretty rough in rural areas.

A River Runs Yellow - The Atlantic

Will the Pope Change the Vatican? Or Will the Vatican Change the Pope? - National Geographic 

Earth on Track for Back-to-Back  Records for Highest Temperatures - Bloomberg

What We Don't Know About Canada Might Hurt Us - FiveThirtyEight.  About the damage caused by conservatives' disdain for government statistics-gathering.  A major pet peeve of mine.

21 Questions for Donald Trump - National Memo.  About a month old, but gaining attention.

Donald Trump Just Stopped Being Funny - Matt Taibbi.  Reminiscent of the late days of Campaign 2008.  The ugliness of dumb, white America (or 'Merica) is never far below the surface.

Presidential Sensation Deez Nuts Is a 15-Year-Old Iowa Farm Boy - The Daily Beast

Are You an Angry Voter? Take a Deep Breath - Bloomberg View

Where the population of Europe is growing - and where it is declining - Berliner Morgenpost

This is the most common job held by immigrants in each state - Vox

Ag-grivated Assault

The Onion:

I like the 4-H joke.

County Fair Weekend Links

Yep, summer's almost over.  The fair runs through Thursday, then school starts back up.  Here are a few stories to enjoy if you aren't eating fried foods or watching livestock beauty contests:

Hellbent, But Not Broken - SBNation

The Other Oil Boom - Texas Monthly.  Texas olive oil.

How the Midwest's Corn Farms Are Cooking The Planet - Mother Jones.  The headline is a bit alarmist, but it is always good to hear what folks on the anti-Big Ag side are saying.

A Muscle Drug For Pigs Comes Out of The Shadows - The Salt.  More resistance to Big Ag.

In Defense of the Cockroach - The New Yorker

One of the newest, most viable forms of clean energy could beat all other existing options - Business Insider.  Algae.

The California "Energy Miracle" - Priceonomics

The Lowly Lightbulb Outshines Solar And Wind On U.S. Power Grids - Bloomberg.  But don't take away conservatives' 130-year old lighting technology.

Evil but Stupid - n+1

A DuPont twofer: The Teflon Toxin - The Intercept, and Up in the Tower - Texas Monthly

The Midwest, Home of the Supermodel - The Atlantic

The Kansas Experiment - New York Times Magazine

Republican Presidential Contenders Flock To Iowa State Fair - Wall Street Journal and The Political Circus Is Coming To The Iowa State Fair - Bloomberg.  One reason to avoid the Iowa State Fair.  Another reason: the Iowa State Patrol seems to hang out on I-80 and harass anybody pulling a trailer by busting them for commercial truck violations (I know from experience).

The Geography of Profanity - Pacific Standard (and the source at Jack Grieve's Homepage).  Surprisingly, Western Ohio is a hotspot for the C-word.

 

First of August Weekend Links

Well, we're in the dog days of summer (and the craft breweries are already turning out Marzenbier and Pumpkin Ales) and here are some interesting stories to check out this weekend:

How 2 Iowa Reporters in 1973 accidentally started the world's largest bike tour - Vox

This Kentucky Distillery Is Blasting David Bowie Songs to Flavor Its Brandy - Vice

The complex mix that makes bacon taste so good - BBC

Hay for cheese? Barter booms in cash-squeezed rural Greece - Reuters and With Greek banks still shuttered, unsold eggs point to deeper woes - Washington Post

Out of the Box - Texas Monthly.  Charles Goodnight and the original food truck.

Sam Adams Could Turn Benedict Arnold Because of Taxes - Bloomberg

TPP pressure on Canada, but U.S. is super-star in agriculture subsidies - Financial Post

Ohio State Fair for the win:

Who wears a size-40 shoe and weighs a ton? Ohio State Fair's new Smokey - Columbus Dispatch

See Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, Brutus Buckeye honored with butter sculpture: photos - Cleveland Plain Dealer

Butter sculptures through the years - Columbus Dispatch

Deep-fried pie? Donut ice cream bar? The State Fair offers it all - Columbus Dispatch


A Dream Undone - New York Times.  On the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. I remember wondering years back why the Farm Bureau opposed the Voting Rights Act.  As I watch the importance of the rural vote in Republican power dynamics, I understand the origin of that opposition a little more.

Consider the Can - The Big Roundtable.  From Roughly 100 Fantastic Magazine Articles from 2014 - Conor Friedersdorf

The Candidates - London Review of Books.  Sad but true.  What a fucking clown show.

What militarism means - The American Conservative.  About the F-35.

FBI enlisting public help to uncover corruption in Kentucky - WYMT.  Two words: Richie Farmer. Also see Kasich's Assets Valued at $9.2 to $22.1 Million - Bloomberg.  Remember, the guy grew up in a working-class family and had a grand total of two non-government jobs in his life: Fox News host and managing director at Lehman Brothers.  That's called cashing in on government service.

Iran calls for Israel's nuclear disarmament - Christian Science Monitor.  Calling out the ultimate double standard.

What Happens One Hour After Drinking A Can Of Coke - The Renegade Pharmacist

Superfly

Superfly from Victory Journal on Vimeo.

Last Full October Weekend Links

Some stories to check out this weekend:

Jackie's Ghost: Roger Kahn and Jackie Robinson - Grantland.  Excellent piece.

World's Best Bucking Bull About to Retire - Morning Edition.   Bushwacker, who has only once been ridden for a full 8 seconds.

Daughter of the Dragon: Biking Bhutan with no shocks, no balls and a very gracious prince - SBNation

Greased Up at the State Fair of Texas: A night with the company that recycles the thousands and thousands of gallons of oil used during the fair - Texas Monthly

Idaho's sewer system is the Snake River: As Big Ag flourishes, this massive waterway suffers - High Country News.  See also, Environmental Impacts of Exporting Dry Milk Powder - Big Picture Agriculture

Soldier Flies: The New Food for Farm Fish - Scientific American.  More aquaculture news for you, Pete.

Alan Eustace Jumps From Stratosphere, Breaking Felix Baumgartner's Record - New York Times.  More cool video.

The man with the golden blood - Mosaic

TxDOT Ends Program That Converts Paved Roads to Gravel - Texas Tribune.  Truck traffic from the fracking boom and an insufficient maintenance budget were the original drivers of the program.  Politics is the driver of the termination of it.

Found in Pittsburgh: The Old Steel Industry, Frozen in Time - Wall Street Journal

Eye of the Storm: Ferguson Burger Bar & More - St. Louis Magazine

China's Rising Wages and the 'Made in USA' Revival - Businessweek

Twinx a Hit at New York State Fair

WSJ:

In an era of kale chips and green-vegetable smoothies, a Twinkie might be seen as sinful enough.
But stuff the spongy snack cake with a Twix candy bar, wrap it in bacon, then coat it in batter and drop it into a deep fryer, and the sugar-sprinkled confection becomes an exercise in caloric excess—and a standout among the many fried and fatty treats at this year's Great New York State Fair....
We still can't make them fast enough," said Mr. Hasbrouck, estimating that during busy periods his staff will fry up around 150 an hour inside the truck, where the menu of fried delicacies also includes cheese curd, Oreos and pumpkin pie.
The Twinx concept came about by accident, said Mr. Hasbrouck, a Marion, N.Y., resident who launched his business at the fair in 2009 and has returned each year since.
In 2013, an employee mistakenly kept calling out "Twinx" when customers ordered a deep-fried Twinkie or Twix bar, which combines a cookie bar, caramel and chocolate.
"We were slow one day, so we decided to try it out and see what happens," said Mr. Hasbrouck, who expanded his operations at the fair this year to a second location.
Those game enough to try the Twinx offered mixed feedback. Some said the bacon was "too much" while others felt the combination worked.
"I didn't know what to expect, but I think it's good," said Alyssa Neider, 33, from Syracuse.

Almost everything is better deep-fried.  I'd maybe even try kale, if it was breaded and fried.  It makes me laugh that the Wall Street Journal explains what a Twix bar is.  I grew up on those things.

Parents Ruin Everything

Surprisingly, the Washington Post hits the state fair scene, and highlights the big money livestock show stupidity (h/t Fair Mom):

Increasing sale prices are just one component of the escalating cost of showing pigs — premium feeds are also very expensive. But they’re not as costly as cattle, which is partly why interest has grown in hog competitions. The National Swine Federation recorded a 15 percent increase in the number of purebred registered hogs between 2009 and 2013, and youth membership tripled over the past 10 years, to 12,400 kids.
Vaughan declined to say how much she paid for their pigs. “We do the top line of everything,” she says. “You get out of it what you put into it.”
Success in the show ring, however, is a far from objective process — especially when the judges themselves are in the hog breeding business.
“There is a lot of politics to it,” Vaughan says. “There’s people we’ve never bought a pig from, and they’ll bring them right to the top, and kick ‘em in the guts. And they’re doing that to my little boy, that makes my mommy claws come out a little bit. I’ll never go to a sale of his, if that’s how you’re going to treat me. You should be saying, ‘I want you to have my pig.’” ‘
The Vaughans’ determination aside, competition in West Virginia is mild compared to the massive state fairs in Iowa and Indiana and Ohio.

I've never understood the economics of market show animals, or breeding stock for that matter.  At least with the breeding stock, you have a small chance of hitting the lottery with semen sales (yes, I did type that), but with the market animals, you are paying outrageous money for a steer or barrow (castrated male cattle and swine, for the city folks out there) that only has a future on somebody's dinner plate.  The market for that is pretty well set (at a loss), although state fair grand champions will bring in a windfall (a state champion steer bought a local guy a Corvette and an Ohio State education [well, at least the car was worth something]).  Anyway, parents, as they have been wont to do in kids' sports, have ruined another youth pastime by ratcheting up the competition until they drive the fun (and affordability) out of things.  What good is childhood if it is just the fucked up adult world for minors?  My parents did a lot of things right, but one of the things they did best was to keep the right perspective on youth sports and 4H.  At least for the sports, it helped that my sister and I were terrible athletes.  For the fair, it probably helped that we were cheap and lazy, and only interested in a county fair pass.

County Fair Weekend Links

Our county fair started yesterday, so I'll be busy talking to folks I haven't seen in a year, soaking up farmer conventional wisdom and supporting the beer garden.  Here are some interesting stories:

The dark, disturbing world of the visa-for-sale program - Fortune.  Just in case you didn't think Illinois Democrats were corrupt as hell.

How Wall Street Tobacco Deals Left States With Billions In Toxic Debt - Pro Publica.  I'm not exactly sure what to make of this.  Richard Cordray is one of the smarter Ohio Democrats, who happens to be in charge of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but it kind of sounds like he teamed up with investment bank scumbags to rip off investors.  In theory, it appears Ohio can walk away from this debt if the tobacco money doesn't materialize, but I could see Republicans rushing to bail out investors and blaming Democrats, although that probably won't happen for a long while, unless investment bank scumbags can convince them they can "cut their losses" right now.

Kansas bond rating downgraded after tax cuts - Washington Post.  On the other end of the political spectrum, Art Laffer and Trickle-down Economics (TM) fail miserably yet again.

'Peabody' wins fair's big boar contest at 1,273 pounds - Des Moines Register.  That is a big fucking pig.

The Prosecutor and the Snitch - Did Texas execute an innocent man? - The Marshall Project.  On the Cameron Todd Willingham case.  To answer the question, yes, probably a number of times.

Making Sense of the U.S. Oil Story - OilPrice.  This deserves a post.

The War Photo No One Would Publish - The Atlantic. From Gulf War I.

On Reaganolatry - Paul Krugman

Big Butter Field of Dreams

Better than Big Butter Jesus:

KEYC - Mankato News, Weather, Sports -

God bless state fairs, their butter sculptures, deep fried foods and ridiculous corniness.

Boxing Wraps Up at State Fair

Columbus Dispatch:

Boxers young and old vied for championships in 21 bouts that capped the fair’s 47th amateur boxing tournament, which started with about 170 fighters ages 8 to 25 who weighed in on July 22, and ended with 31 winners in various categories, including 10 who were unopposed.
Yesterday’s fights at the ShowPlace Pavilion drew a crowd of more than 250 spectators as well as a steady flow of passers-by throughout the day.
Steve Gorski and his wife, Trisha, stopped by the pavilion during a break from visiting the fair’s sheep and cows with their daughters, Amelia, 4, and Abigail, 6, and their son, Zachary, 9.
Mr. Gorski, a former college boxer, didn’t know about the fair’s tournament and wanted his kids to get a glimpse of the action.
“It’s an exciting sport,” he said. “I wanted to at least show the kids what’s going on.”
Others came from throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania to cheer on friends and family members as they exchanged punches in the ring.
Allen Horner watched anxiously as his stepson, Skyler Gill, 15, of Zanesville, fought Shelton Organ, 16, of Columbus, for the championship in the junior division’s 145-pound weight class.
Gill recently returned from Las Vegas after taking third place in the national Junior Golden Gloves tournament this month with his team, PAL Zanesville Boxing.

I didn't realize they had a boxing tournament at the Ohio State Fair.  Even though it makes football look safe, I love that sport.

Ohio State Symbols Carved in Butter at State Fair

I missed this when the Ohio State Fair opened, but I love me some butter sculptures, especially a butter trilobite (the state fossil, obviously):

Butter sculptures galore await Ohioans today as the 2014 Ohio State Fair opens its gates for a 12-day run. There’s a butter tomato, because Ohio is one of the biggest producers of the fruit. There’s a butter carnation, the state flower, and a butter trillium, the state wildflower.
Also in butter are a cardinal, the state bird, balancing on a buckeye tree, and a buckeye with a grinning face dangling below it.
And then there are the butter versions of a ladybug, a black racer snake, a spotted salamander and a white-tailed deer, as well as a trilobite fossil, an arrow-head, a papaw and an Adena pipe.
All of the 15 sculptures relate to Ohio. Made of real butter and displayed in a refrigerated case at 46 degrees, they were unveiled yesterday at the Ohio Expo Center’s Dairy Building.
“I’ve been lobbying for this for years,” said a jubilant Bob Kling, the chief sculptor for the butter creations for 15 years. “There are a lot of interesting sculptural forms among our state’s official symbols.”
His favorite? The bullfrog, which is about the size of a small sheep in its butter form.
The most difficult, Kling said, was the carnation, whose thin petals tended to flop forward during its creation. The cardinal was challenging, too, because it tended to slide off the butter branch on which it was perched.
Scott Higgins, president of the American Dairy Association Mideast, said the sculptures “ epitomize the spirit of Ohio.”
Five artists spent six days slathering 2,033 pounds of butter onto the frames they’d spent months building out of hardware cloth, rock lath and other products, Kling said.

Sure, it's corny, but I don't think there is anything more midwestern than a ton (literally) of butter (or back in the day, lard) sculptures at the state fair.  For some strange reason, I'm lookinf forward to the Field of Dreams sculpture at the Iowa State Fair

Late July Weekend Links

Here are some interesting stories to check out over the weekend:

From YMCA Flying Fish to France: My English Channel Swim - Bloomberg

Research supports the notion of the 'hot hand'; baseball players always believed in it - Washington Post.  I was always a believer.  Whether it was baseball, golf, cornhole, darts or any other semi-athletic competition which required some motor skills, I was either on or off (generally off).

 Lessons From America's War for the Greater Middle East - Andrew Bacevich

The intellectual cess pool of the inflation truthers - Wonkblog.  Amity Shlaes being an intellectually-bankrupt faux-economist faux-historian hack isn't exactly noteworthy.  The truthers are way wrong about hyperinflation, but considering the steep rise in health care, education and energy costs (and the trickle-down into food costs thanks to ethanol policy) combined with pay growing slower than inflation, this article may be a little too dismissive of the squeeze the former middle class is under.

Inflation is always and everywhere a political phenomenon - Pieria

Evaluating the Benefits and Costs of Patents - Morning Edition.  The fact that this is even being discussed shows how badly the patent system is in need of reforms.  Until the last few years, questioning the patent system was beyond the pale.

Cheap at sea, pricey on the plate: The voodoo of lobster economics - Globe and Mail

How to Ignore a Plague - Medium

Give Us This Day The Bread Wheat Genome - Scientific American

Farming the apocalypse - Aeon

A disturbing glimpse into the shrouded world of the Texas grand jury system - Houston Chronicle.  I don't think abuse of the grand jury system is limited to Texas.  But like in other bad categories, Texas is amongst the leaders nationally.

So Sue Me: Republicans Learn To Love Litigation - The New Yorker.  Republicans desperately try to maintain ruling power and privilege despite being a minority (numerically, not ethnically, yet) party.  Note: you shouldn't attack other minorities when you are one. That will be a lesson which takes Republicans a long time to learn.  They're a bit on the slow side.

 Quiz: Which Of These State Fair Foods Are Faux - The Salt.  Mmmmmm.

Corporate America Is Enriching Shareholders at the Expense of the Economy - FiveThirtyEight.  Somehow, an accounting professor wrote an article that mentioned dividend payments to shareholders increased in the last decade without mentioning that the tax rate on dividends was cut from ordinary income rate to 15%.  He even appears to not even realize that the tax rate was cut. WTF?

America's Move to Soy Hobbles Dairy - Wall Street Journal.