Mid-January Links

Interesting stories from the last week or two:

Mike Trout is the God of WAR - FiveThirtyEight. Video. 

Female Ranchers Are Reclaiming the American West – New York Times 

Court Strikes Down Iowa's 'Ag-Gag' Law That Blocked Undercover Investigations - NPR

Meet The Granary Weevil, The Pantry Monster Of Our Own Creation - The Salt (via my old boss)

Fire, Floods and Famine: The Pessimist's Guide to 2019 - Bloomberg.  Even I hope this is too far-fetched.

Small Weasel-Like Animals Are Taking Down Big Cats – National Geographic  

Norway Embarks On Its Most Ambitious Transport Project Yet – NPR.  Floating bridges and tunnels?  I'll let somebody else design those.

This GIF shows how far the 100th Meridian has shifted since 1980 – Grist

This is how Canada’s housing correction begins – McLean’s     

Meet The Woman Turning The Payday Loan Industry On Its Head – Forbes.   Trying to work up a low-interest payday loan replacement was one of my not-for-profit goals.

The French Burglar Who Pulled Off His Generation’s Biggest Art Heist – The New Yorker

Taleb the Philosopher – First Things

The Grand Illusion – Lapham’s Quarterly

After the Storm – The Baffler

Learn about the Iowa district that re-elects Steve King year after year - Des Moines Register

Here's an update of what was called last year as "One of the most important charts about the economy this century.” Price Changes of selected consumer goods and services over the last ~20 years. It made the rounds at the Fed last year. @ritholtz @slangwise @AEI @MichaelRStrain pic.twitter.com/pt8UEJSIL5

— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) January 11, 2019

End of Planting Links

We had a number of setbacks that ate up a few perfectly fine days, but the weather was extremely cooperative, and everything is in the ground.  While we were working on it, I came across some stories I thought were interesting:

Who is basketball's GOAT - Lebron James or Michael Jordan - Boston Globe and Cavaliers are surviving in the playoffs despite the dilemma of LeBron James' rest - ESPN.  I'm extremely biased, but I think Lebron would be the best teammate to play alongside.

The Big Ten’s Big Business - Slate.  "Amateur."  What a crock.

The Art of Icon Writing - Baltimore Sun

Why We've Been Fighting About Milk for 10,000 Years - Time

Maple Syrup Cartel Has a Plan to Cover Shortfall - Bloomberg.  I can't get enough of the maple syrup cartel and their strategic maple syrup reserve.

The Colonel In The Kitchen: A Surprising History Of Sous Vide - The Salt

Alan Turing’s chemistry hypothesis turned into a desalination filter - Ars Technica

How the 50-mm Lens Became ‘Normal’ - The Atlantic 

The water war that will decide the fate of 1 in 8 Americans – Grist.  People who move to the desert southwest are insane.

Tech Envisions the Ultimate Start-Up: An Entire City – The Upshot.  Umm, no thanks.  I'm not sure how Beta versions of cities would work.

Kansas' Medicaid Data Is So Bad, Analysts Can't Even Tell If It's Working - Governing.  Kansas is pretty much Republican "governance" in its purest form.

Nonprofit Liberty University's "lucrative enterprise" - Marketplace.  Gaming regulations targeting for-profit colleges.

Trump is no longer the worst person in government - George Will.  On Mike Pence. Let's not get crazy, George.  Both suck in tremendously different ways.

Donald Trump declares trade war on China - Financial Times.  This will probably hit farmers hard.

Pi Day Mini-Links

I hope you had a great Pi Day.  I figured I would throw a few links up, especially since the first one involves a high seed that might not be in the tournament very long:

The Nun in Loyola-Chicago’s Huddle Has a Few Things to Say – New York Times 

Why No. 1 Virginia’s Plodding Pace Makes It Ripe for an Upset – Wall Street Journal

The EU Is Going After the U.S. Cranberry Industry – Bloomberg.  Targeting Paul Ryan's home state.

The Number of Monarch Butterflies Wintering in Mexico Is Down Again – Modern Farmer. For what it's worth, I've been avoiding the milkweed when mowing waterways and scrubland.  I've noticed more Monarchs the last couple years than I saw in previous years.

When Twenty-Six Thousand Stinkbugs Invade Your Home - The New Yorker 

Stephen Hawking Is Still Underrated – The Atlantic  

Pi Day 2018: the math of pi explained, as simply as possible - Vox

Trump's mining giveaway – Politico.  There is no better example of the ineptitude and corruption of Congress than the fact that a law as shitty as the General Mining Act of 1872 is still the law of the land after 146 years.

Canadian Amateurs Discovered a New Type of Aurora.  It’s named Steve. - The Atlantic  

End of February Links

Here are some stories from the last few days that caught my eye:

Canadian Grief: Curling and Hockey Losses Are “Terrible, Terrible, Terrible” – WSJ and The Worst Tickets at the Winter Olympics – WSJ

The Doomsday L Train Shutdown Just Might Save NYC - Wired
 
Like Lemons? Quinoa? Thank This Food Explorer For Bringing Them To Your Plate – The Salt

Refiner goes belly-up after big payouts to Carlyle Group - Reuters.  Ted Cruz is blaming the Renewable Fuel Standard and RINs.  I'm guessing Carlyle bled them more than the RFS.

Rainfall's natural variation hides climate change signal – Phys.org

Worst Roommate Ever - New York Magazine 

A Well-Regulated Militia - Part 0 - Advice Unasked.  A good explanation of the most poorly understood part of the Second Amendment.  I think this will have to figure in any assault rifle ban that may come about.

 'This is not normal': Glitches mar new tax law - Politico.  Democrats will have to help these idiots fix these fuckups.

The Frat House of Representatives – Politico

Here are two bonus medical history stories I was talking about this weekend.  I think I've posted each at one time or another, but they are both fascinating.   How Moldy Hay And Sick Cows Led To A Lifesaving Drug - All Things Considered, and The 'Man Who Touched His Own Heart' Changed Medicine - All Things Considered.

35 Minerals Absolutely Critical to U.S. Security - Visual Capitalist

U.S. Wins Curling Gold

I would say this may be one of the biggest upsets in Olympic history:

About a week ago U.S. men's curling team was dead on the ice sheet. A 5-8 loss to Norway in round robin play left the USA with a 2-4 record and three basically must-win matches to go. U.S. skip John Shuster, thinking he had authored yet another Olympic implosion, walked with his family through the Olympic Park while his wife tried to convince him not to give up.
Eventually he sat down in the grass, looked around him and thought, "This is silly. This is the Olympics. I feel like I'm getting my heart broken by this sport and it's just silly." He says he went to bed that night and woke up the next morning and saw the story of U.S. speed skater Dan Jansen, who endured years of shock defeats in the Olympics only to win the final Olympic race of his career.
From then on, Shuster and his team ("Team Reject" as Shuster jokingly called them, referencing their exclusion from USA Curling's High Performance Program after a disappointing showing at Sochi) of Tyler George, Matt Hamilton and John Landsteiner won five straight, culminating in today's shock victory over top-ranked Sweden to give the USA its second ever medal in curling, its first since earning bronze at the 2006 Turin games, and its first ever gold medal in the sport.
A large and loud U.S. contingent gave the arena a home game feel.

So the U.S. won gold in womens hockey and mens curling, and the Canadians didn't.  That has to to be a bitter pill to swallow north of the 49th parallel.

The Physics of Curling

The New Yorker explains that physicists aren't really sure why curling stones curl in the way they do.  There are multiple theories:

In June, 2013, Nyberg and his colleagues made that argument in an equation-laden paper in the journal Tribology Letters (“tribology” being the fancy word for “friction science”). Not long before, in the journal Wear, they had proposed a model of their own, which became known as scratch-guiding theory. Using images from an electron microscope, the researchers showed that, as a curling stone slides along, it leaves fine scratches on the ice in the direction of rotation. The scratches are laid down by the front edge of the running band, but when the back edge encounters them it has a tendency to follow them, causing the stone to curl in the direction of rotation. In follow-up experiments, Nyberg’s group found that, by scratching the ice themselves in various ways, they could alter the trajectory of sliding stones, even ones that weren’t rotating. In one setup, they created a lane in which the ice was scratched in one direction and then, farther on, in the other direction. Then they slid a stone down the lane and watched as it curled, first one way and then the other.

“All of this added up to a mechanism that we felt was reasonable,” Nyberg said. He feels further vindicated by a controversy that broke out a couple of years ago: curlers were using new brooms that scratched the ice rather than merely warming it, enabling them to control the curl like never before. The “Frankenbrooms” have since been banned by the World Curling Federation. “I don’t think they’d read our papers, though,” Nyberg said.

One person who did read Nyberg’s papers was Shegelski, and in January, 2016, he wrote a comment piece in Tribology Letters that called the dismissal of asymmetrical-friction models “inappropriate.” Nyberg and his colleagues soon replied, reiterating their earlier points. When I spoke with Shegelski, he noted that, while scratch-guiding theory is intriguing, the theorists haven’t attempted to demonstrate that the mechanism can generate a metre-wide curl, much less explain why the curl is the same regardless of the rotation rate. “The fact is, in a theory, you need to have quantitative results, and there aren’t any,” he said.
Recently, Shegelski teamed up with Edward Lozowski, a physicist and atmospheric scientist at the University of Alberta, to reconsider the curling conundrum. Some years earlier, Lozowski had published papers on the science of bobsledding and speed skating. “Ed is just a wizard at the physics of ice,” Shegelski told me. Together, the two men developed an improved explanation, which they unveiled in the latest issue of Cold Regions Science and Technology. They call it the pivot-slide model. Lozowski, whom I spoke to over Skype, explained it to me by holding up a hair comb and running his finger slowly across the teeth. Notice, he said, that his fingertip adheres to each tooth long enough to bend it, until the elastic force becomes large enough that the tooth breaks free and snaps back into place—that’s stick-slip friction. The same force will cause a circular saw, when it binds, to jump up and try to pivot around the obstacle. That’s what’s happening with a curling stone, he said.
“Every time the running band encounters a pebble, it catches on it,” Lozowski explained. “And, because ice is elastic, the pebble is deflected, then snaps back, and the rock moves on, pivoting during the deflection.” The pebbles and the pivots are small but they are many, and Lozowski and Shegelski calculated that the net result is enough to curl the stone by a metre. They emphasized that there is still a lot of research to be done—making models of the curling ice, quantifying the number of pebbles per unit area. “It could be all wrong,” Lozowski said. “But whether it’s right or not, at least it’s testable.” Nyberg, for one, is unpersuaded. “To be honest, I don’t really understand what they’re getting at,” he said.

That's a lot of complex theory about sliding rocks on ice, but they are pretty fancy rocks, and it isn't just your average ice, so I guess that part of it makes sense to me.  Not much of the rest does.  I would probably just stick to drinking beer and sliding rocks and saying, wow, look how much that curved.

More February Links

Look at this, two links posts in less than a week:

An Oral History of The Wire’s Unforgettable 5-Minute ‘F*ck’ Scene - Vulture

Canada In Crisis.  Its Curling Teams Are In Trouble - Wall Street Journal

The Shape of Ancient Dice Suggests Shifting Beliefs in Fate and Chance - The Atlantic 

Doc: We're all better than this racist crap going on at our area high schools - Cincinnati Enquirer.  Racists on Cincinnati's west side? I'm SHOCKED.

Why Storms Seem to Follow I-95 – The Atlantic 

How Japan is preparing for the great flood – New Statesman

Besides, I’ll Be Dead – London Review of Books 

Could Brexit leave us in a French Revolution scenario of having no bread to feed ourselves? – Irish Independent

A University of, by and for the People - Sarah Vowell.  Second to abolition, land grant colleges are the finest work the Republican Party ever undertook.  The Montana tax levy vote will be one to watch.

The Business World Is Livid Over Trump’s Immigration “Train Wreck” - Vanity Fair 

How the New Tax Law Could Slow Disaster Recovery in Small Towns - Governing

Chart: The Population Rank of Every U.S. State Over 100 Years - Visual Capitalist 

Quebec - The Saudi Arabia of the Maple Syrup Market

I love that there is a maple syrup cartel.  Of course it is in Canada:

After eight years of tightly limiting output to keep prices high, the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers next year will boost its quota by 12 percent for 13,500 sap farmers who operate in the Canadian province. The goal is twofold: Reclaim the 10 percent of market share lost to the U.S. over the last decade, and quell a rebellion by producers increasingly turning to black market sales for growth.
Boosting the quota now is “almost perfect timing” as farmers are seeing record output, according to Alan Bryson, 41, who drains sap from 45,000 taps on trees in Notre-Dame-de-la-Merci, Quebec. The prospect of more sales “outweighs the frustration” felt by farmers in the past, he said....
The unanswered question is where all this additional product is going to go. Tappers this year will be paid C$2.88 ($2.20) a pound, based on a weighted average, federation data show. That’s up a penny from the previous two years...
U.S. production this year totaled 4.2 million gallons, a 23 percent boost from a year earlier, with Vermont accounting for 47 percent of the total, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in June. The number of taps rose 5 percent this year, to 12.55 million, after increasing 45 percent from 2007 and 2015, according to the USDA.
That growth frustrated Quebec farmers, who have been urging an end to quotas. While the government-sanctioned cartel kept prices stable by limiting output and maintaining strategic stockpiles, tappers complained that the system imposed a “heavy, inflexible handicap to the province’s performance,” according to a 70-page report commissioned by Quebec Agriculture Minister Pierre Paradis, released earlier this year.
That frustration was leading some farmers to sell on the black market, and some said they felt harassed by the federation, according to the report.

Nothing like a cartel to cost itself market share.  Previous story on the Great Maple Syrup Heist here.

First Fish Fry Weekend Links

I survived the first of the three fish fries I work annually.  Since I doubt that anybody that reads this got to enjoy the deep-fried fish, fries, pickles, cheese, Oreos and cookie dough balls I prepared last night, I'll leave you with a few stories to read:

The Making of "Homer At The Bat,"The Episode That Conquered Prime Time 20 Years Ago Tonight - Deadspin

Canada Still Can't Win The Stanley Cup - FiveThirtyEight

Myles Jones Is the Future of Lacrosse - VICE Sports

Equine Herpes Outbreaks are Bad News for Horse Racing - Modern Farmer.  Wow, that is pretty sad.

A South Florida Boxing Rivalry Leads To Cold-Blooded Murder - Miami New Times

For Russian Farmers, Climate Change Is Nyet So Good - The Salt

When Beef Is Off Limits, Beaver And Muskrat Make It To Lenten Menu - The Salt.  Well, if you can't make it to one of our fish fries...

The Passion of the Bureaucrats - London Review of Books

U.S. Shale Drillers are Finally Buckling - Bloomberg and Built Up by Oil Boom, North Dakota Now Has an Emptier Feeling - New York Times.  The bust didn't happen the way I expected, but I'm not surprised it happened.

At Yosemite, a Waterfall Turns Into a Firefall - New York Times.  Gorgeous photos.

How the Panama Canal Got Its Groove Back - Priceonomics

The Economic Recovery's Geographic Disparities - The Atlantic.  Heavily agricultural areas were among the leaders.  Do not expect that to continue in the foreseeable future.

The Great Pennsylvania Government Porn Caper - Esquire

Bernie Sanders is the Worst Presidential Candidate in History, and You and All Your Friends are Idiots - Paste.  The results out of South Carolina may make this moot, but I loved this piece:

Literally none of his so-called “democratic socialist” programs have ever been successfully implemented in any government in world history, except for all the other major nations in the modern world, and also America during our most prosperous period.

Can a Christian Party Survive? - The American Conservative

Reddit Poll Names Most Hated College Football Team In Every State - Bleacher Report.  Ohio State even finished second in Ohio.

Boxing Day Weekend Links

Hopefully everyone had a very fine Christmas.  Here are some entertaining stories for your enjoyment this holiday weekend:

The Last Wrestler - SB Nation.  Looking at the decline of college wrestling and the Tea Party's concept of the decline of America through the athletic biography of Jim Jordan, who is my concept of the do-nothing government employee.  The article is very interesting, though.  I may have to revisit it in depth, if I get a chance.

Jerry Tarkanian and Walter Byers: Adversaries Who Left Mark On N.C.A.A. - New York Times

The Best Eleven Minutes In Sports in 2015 - The New Yorker

U.S. Bread Basket Shifts Thanks to Climate Change - Scientific American.  This is why farmers ought to be concerned about global warming.

Boxing Day, explained - Vox.  I could handle the drinking part.

America's Top Shale Gas Basin In Decline - OilPrice

The Siege of Miami  - The New Yorker

When  the KKK Was a Pyramid Scheme - Priceonomics.  One of many in the history of politics for conservative bigots.

The last time an American tycoon exploited terrorism - Pando

Manifest Injustice - St. Louis Magazine

The Koch-like Family You've Never Heard of Influencing State Legislatures - Political Research
Associates

Hey, Hipsters: Please Save Us From Ted Cruz - P.J. O'Rourke

Republican Poverty: 93 of the Poorest 100 Counties in America Are In Red States - Addicting Info

The State of Rural America in 2015 - Modern Farmer.  Remember, this is at the end of the biggest boom in agriculture in almost 40 years.

Thanksgiving / OSU-Michigan Weekend Links

Here are a few interesting stories for your long holiday weekend:

Wojo's Pigskin Picks: UM, OSU keep sights on rivalry - Detroit News.  This is an OSU-Michigan tradition, but not one of his best efforts.  Michigan's decade of struggles have taken some of the fight out of him.

Bandwagon: Once a national TV staple, Grey Cup now restricted to specialty channels - Ottawa Citizen.  Ottawa notices once they have a team again which makes the Grey Cup (Ottawa vs. Edmonton for those of us in the States).

Cold Turkey - SB Nation.  In which a man tries to avoid football for an entire season.

The Central Valley is sinking: drought forces farmers to ponder the abyss - The Guardian

How Long Can Florida's Citrus Industry Survive? - The Salt

Fattest-Ever U.S. Cattle Herd Signals End to Record Beef Prices - Bloomberg

Don't Try This At Home: Cincinnati's Legendary Beer Gulpers - Cincinnati Magazine 

How potatoes rule the US, in 2 charts - Vox

The Miserable Life of the Presidential Turkey - Priceonomics

Palm Oil Facing 'Powerful Cocktail' of El Nino, Fuel Demand - Bloomberg

Making a Great Wool Blanket Is Harder Than You Think - Bloomberg.  US made.

Bertha: The big risks may lie ahead - Crosscut.  Example number one of a massive infrastructure project gone bad.

How an ugly, brutally effective warplane won the battle for its future - Reuters.  The A-10, of course.

The pretend war: why bombing ISIL won't solve the problem - Andrew Bacevich

Over There - Texas Monthly.  A little more optimistic than I might be about the "War on Terror."

How Chicago tried to cover up a police execution - Chicago Reporter and The Corrupt System that Killed Laquan McDonald - The Atlantic

Who Turned My Blue State Red - New York Times.  Democrats will be challenged to turn out lower income voters while Republicans consolidate gains among traditionally Democratic working-class whites (who are still employed).

How America's Demographic Revolution Reached The Church - National Journal

Who said it: Donald Trump or Mr. Burns from 'The Simpsons'? - Washington Post.  Harder than I anticipated.  Satire has been eclipsed by reality.

Some Parts of America Are Aging Much Faster Than Others - FiveThirtyEight.  Very interesting maps.  This one doesn't bode well for the Great Plains, although some areas also lead in population under 20 (I would guess that skews Hispanic in the Texas Panhandle and Kansas, while it is Mormon in the Mountain West, Catholic in Mercer County, OH, Amish in Holmes County, OH and NE Indiana, and Dutch Reformed in Sioux County, IA and Holland, MI ):

Happy Columbus Day

Update: And Happy Canadian Thanksgiving.

NFL Opening Weekend Links

Football season is fully upon us, with harvest just around the corner.  Here are some stories for you to enjoy this weekend:

The Pitch - Grantland.  A remembrance of September 11 through baseball, and a reminder that the Bush presidency was a long series of major disasters. Also, Why Is ESPN Doing George W. Bush's Dirty Work For Him? - Deadspin.

The Never-ending Stadium Boondoggle - CityLab

Notre Dame President Stands Firm Amid Shifts in College Athletics - New York Times

Football Team Passes For 782 Yards, Scores 90 Points, Still Loses - Deadspin.  WTF?

Rediscovering the Pawpaw - Cincinnati Magazine.  I have some pawpaw trees on the farm, but can't say that there was enough meat to the fruit for me to really taste anything.  It was mainly packed with giant seeds.

Oh. Nuts! Why California's Pistachio Trees Are Shooting Blanks - The Salt

Cereals, Appropriability, and Hierarchy - Naked Capitalism.  Very interesting piece.  Is farmers' eternal hatred of the government and taxes rooted in the formation of society?

America's Most Unlikely Energy Project Is Rising From a Louisiana Bayou - Bloomberg

Understanding of complex networks could help unify gravity and quantum mechanics - ScienceDaily.  Way over my head, but sounds to me like mapping how a human-made or natural complex system is connected seems to match up with quantum theory.

Hellburners Were the Renaissance's Tactical Nukes - War Is Boring.  Speaking of tactical nukes...

A Prescription for More Black Doctors - The New York Times Magazine

Whatsoever Things Are True - The Atavist Magazine

The Continuing Cost of Catholicism's Sex Abuse Scandals - Pacific Standard

Chosen by Mississippi Democrats, Shy Trucker is at a Crossroads - New York Times.  Highlights the perilous state of the Democratic party in much of the interior United States, which also highlights the perilous state of democracy.

Jeb Bush and the Return of Voodoo Economics - The New Yorker  

The Case Against Stephen Harper - The Atlantic.  From what I hear the author say, it sounds like he is the first GOP prime minister of Canada.

Dairy Farmers at the Barricades  and Food Prices Drop Most in Seven Years on Grain Glut, China Rout - Bloomberg.  Seven years of plenty followed by....at least in farm household incomes.

 

Fighting Big Syrup

NYT:

While many Americans associate Vermont with maple syrup, Quebec is its center. The province’s trees produce more than 70 percent of the world’s supply and fill the majority of the United States’ needs. The federation, in turn, has used that dominance to restrict supply and control prices of the pancake topping.

It is effectively a cartel, approved by the provincial government and backed by the law. In 1990, the federation became the only wholesale seller of the province’s production, and in 2004, it gained the power to decide who gets to make maple syrup and how much.

For much of its 49-year history, the federation largely toiled out of sight. Then in 2012, $18 million of maple syrup was stolen from the global strategic reserve, a warehouse where the federation stockpiles the sweetener. Police arrested more than two dozen people in the heist, the first of whom is expected to go on trial in November.

But the federation’s elevated profile exposed the controversial methods it uses to police the market. When the federation suspects farmers are producing and selling outside the system, it posts guards on their properties. It seeks fines from producers and buyers who do not follow the rule. In the most extreme situations, it seizes production.

The federation is unapologetic. It defends the system, saying it keeps prices high and stable.

“Three-quarters of our members are happy or very happy with what we are doing,” said Simon Trépanier, the federation’s executive director. “Those producers are living through the maple syrup production. It’s their main income because we present them with a stable income.”

Mr. Hodge is similarly intransigent. At this point in the season, Mr. Hodge would normally have sold his syrup, turning his attention to his cattle and other crops. But this year he had nothing to sell. He contends that farmers should be allowed to set their own level of production and sell directly to large buyers, regardless of what the law says.
“They call us rebels, say we’re in a sugar war or something. I’ve heard rumors of that,” said Mr. Hodge, at his farm in Bury, Quebec.

“Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”

Across the table, Whitney, his 20-year-old daughter, who also farms, looked up from her smartphone and interjected.

“A war over maple syrup, like how pathetic can you get?”

Syrup more valuable than oil?  I guess the maple syrup cartel is more effective than OPEC.  The cartel definitely seems more aggressive in policing its members than OPEC is.  I just wouldn't think that a maple syrup cartel would have so much influence.

Border War?

MacLean's:

Canada is one wrong move away from a border war with the United States—if you believe a group of boiling-mad Maine lobstermen. Unfathomable as armed conflict between Canada and the United States seems, if it’s going to happen, it will be in the ocean between Maine and New Brunswick, where two tiny, treeless islands—North Rock and Machias Seal—are the last remaining disputed lands between the two countries.
The islands have no obvious value. They aren’t strategically located for military purposes and there are no natural resources to be mined. In fact, the islands’ primary residents are 5,800 pairs of nesting puffins. However, the waters around the islands, known by locals as “the grey zone,” because both Canada and the U.S. claim that part of the ocean, contain a lucrative lobster fishery.
The conflict bubbles to the surface every few years, when a bellicose lobsterman on one side or the other gets quoted in the press and sets the other side off. But things are different this year. Due to the high price of lobster, new lobstermen have entered the fray, and they are ignoring unwritten rules that have kept the conflict on a low simmer since 1783. Most of the American lobstermen are from the Maine coast bordering the grey zone, and most of the Canadians are from Grand Manan Island. Both sides admit they have a few hotheads they keep an eye on, but the new lobstermen aren’t from either community, so there is no one to talk them out of rocking the boat.
“Somebody is going to get killed. We’ve had bad years in the past and got lucky, but this is the worst year I’ve ever seen,” says American John Drouin, chair of the Maine Lobster Zone Council district in charge of the grey zone. Drouin fears things are even more dangerous than they were eight years ago, when Maine lobsterman Patrick Feeney had his thumb ripped off. It got caught as he was trying to free his equipment while jostling with a Canadian for territory. Laurence Cook, chair of the Grand Manan Fishermen’s Association’s committee in charge of the grey zone, echoes Drouin’s sentiment. “You can work with some people, but there are assholes on both sides of the border who take things too far,” says Cook, who received a death threat in 2002.
As of the end of June, lobster prices in the Maritimes were at about $5.50 a pound, up from about $4 at the same time last year. The high price of lobster is encouraging non-locals to fish in the area, including reviled “company boats” from Nova Scotia that both lobstermen from New Brunswick and Maine say are aggressive and dangerous. Unlike most boats owned and operated by the same person, company boat operators often come from farther afield, so they don’t know the surrounding waters, and their behaviour is less likely to be tempered by the need to work alongside someone in future years.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources say it regularly patrols the area, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada insists Canadian agencies enforce rule violations—the number of traps, the size of lobsters—by Canadian boats, but local lobstermen on both sides feel the other side regularly breaks the law without any consequences.
Canadian fishermen set lobster traps in the grey zone from July to November. The Americans have a much longer season. Drouin, who has been fishing lobster off the coast of Maine for 37 years, is fed up with what he sees as reckless and unpunished lawbreaking. “Canadians are like Vikings. They’ll rape and pillage and not give a s–t, because they can still go home [after their short season],” says Drouin.

Fishermen: folks who make farmers look sane.  Putting things on an international boundary, where stereotypes and bitterness can take root, just spices things up more.  Well, hopefully nobody dies.

Bringing Back the Light

Bringing Back the Light from Mark Wyatt on Vimeo.

Drought in Prairie Provinces Hits Canola, Wheat

Bloomberg:

More than anywhere else in the world, Canada’s Prairie provinces yield canola seeds that are crushed to make vegetable oil used by McDonald’s, KFC, Taco Bell and Frito-Lay. This year, a dry spell has left the soil more like concrete, making it tougher for farmers to plant and threatening to cut production for a second straight year.
“We’ve just been missing every rain,” grower Eric McPeek, 30, said by telephone from his 4,100-acre farm in Coronach, Saskatchewan. McPeek sowed canola, durum wheat, chickpeas and lentils in ground he said was the hardest since 2010.
It’s been a rough ride for canola in Canada, where this year’s lack of moisture followed a spring-planting season in 2014 that was delayed by too much rain. Prices have jumped 18 percent from a four-year low in September. Dry conditions also make it harder to plant wheat, as weather disruptions in North America sparked a rally this month in prices that had been mired in a bear market because of record global inventories. Canada is the world’s largest wheat exporter, after the U.S.
“All of the crops are having trouble now,” Ken Kultgen, a farmer and the mayor of Foremost, Alberta, said in a telephone interview on May 14. Some of the wheat and barley seeded early in the province’s southwest haven’t germinated because of the dry weather, while his land hasn’t had rain since early April, and the soil is too “hard and crusted” to seed 320 acres of canola, he said.
Areas of Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada’s biggest crop growers, got less than 40 percent of normal rain this growing season, according to the government agriculture agency. Last year, planting was delayed in the Prairie provinces by too much rain, and was partly to blame for a 22 percent drop in wheat output and the 13 percent slide in the canola harvest.
Most of southwest Saskatchewan and southern and central Alberta have been dry for the past several weeks, said Andrew Owen, a meteorologist at Overland Park, Kansas-based World Weather Inc. Below-normal precipitation is expected for much of the growing season in the Canadian Prairies, and crop quality and yields may decline, he said. Most canola and wheat seeds need to be sown by early June to allow enough time to mature before the harvest in mid-October.

Weather-related trouble isn't just limited to California.  Or Washington.  It's somewhat disconcerting that the weather has been so fickle in so many places.

And The Long Canadian National Nightmare Continues

Tampa Bay 4 - Montreal 1.  Lord Stanley's Cup will only be visiting the motherland with Canadian natives from a States-based team for yet another year.

Sculpted in Time: The Wise Man

Bad Chauvinist Ideas - Alberta Election Edition

As 44 years of conservative "governance" comes to an end, a lesson about how not to win the female vote:

Any pretence that the election was about that budget was destroyed on April 21, when Prentice rolled back an unpopular plan to reduce a charitable tax credit. What he didn’t touch were those corporate tax rates, despite the fact that raising corporate taxes remains widely popular. This gave the NDP a real policy stick. The beatings commenced. Two days later, Prentice challenged Notley on those corporate taxes and, after misstating the party’s figures, told the personable, likeable female leader that “math is difficult.”

Like it is for most conservatives in North America, math is difficult for Mr. Prentice.  It just isn't good optics for him to be mansplaining that to a female politician.