No surprise

West Virginia has taken several steps in a positive direction in the last couple of years, but we're still at the bottom on some indicators. Women in the state rank last in terms of earnings and workforce participation. And we're tied with our old pal Mississippi on obesity, which is one reason why efforts like Try This West Virginia are kind of important.

Along that line, the New York Times ran this item, which calls for putting the physical in education.One of several victories last years was the adoption of a state school board policy that mandates 30 minutes of physical activity per day in schools.We can beat this.

WE MAY BE CHUNKY, but at least we're not as big as this guy. Yet.

A LITTLE WIN. The Affordable Care Act got a boost in court yesterday.

Late Expectations

It has long been observed that youth is wasted on the young. Sometimes I wonder whether the reading of classics is too. When I was in school, I read some that eventually became favorites but seemed boring at the time. It wasn't till I re-read The Scarlet Letter as an adult that I realized how hilarious Hawthorne's opening chapter on working in the customhouse was.

Dickens' Great Expectations is another example of one I didn't fully appreciate until I revisited it as a grown up. Jack Murnighan, author of Beowulf at the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits, hit the nail on the head:

The fact that everybody doesn't already realize that Great Expectations is one of the most delightful books of all time absolutely befuddles me--and is a testament to how badly we mishandle literary education. What should be a cherished favorite in everyone's library is too often squandered by being assigned to people who can't go alone to R-rated movies.

I'm not saying kids shouldn't read classics. But maybe they should contain a warning label saying something like "The contents of this book will seem way cooler in 15 years or so."

A PARTIAL WIN? WV Gov. Early Ray Tomblin partially restored funding for domestic violence legal services and early childhood programs. This is one of the top issues of the Our Children Our Future child poverty campaigns, although folks are trying to out what this really means.

SOMETHING ELSE TO DENY. That would be the latest climate change news.

URGENT LONG SNOUTED DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What was I thinking?

A week or two back, I signed up to run a 15 mile trail run tomorrow morning for reasons that now escape me. I have two bad knees, one bad foot, and a nearly dead heart. Plus, I haven't run that far since 2003.

 And the best/worst part is the race starts at 7:30, about two hours before my body wakes up on a good day.

In other words, it should be a day of glorious agony.

I take as my (admittedly flawed) patron saint for this adventure Teddy Roosevelt, who said this:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat.

That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking with it.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE,  WV Gov. Tomblin signed the Future Fund into law.

A CHICKEN FROM HELL, ANYONE? Click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Cute and not cute

If you just want to see something amusing today, click here. You'll never think about toy dinosaurs the same way again.

AND IF THAT DIDN'T WORK, check out this harmonica playing elephant.

OK, ENOUGH CUTE. Here's a look at the connection between zombies, international politics and 21st century anxieties.

AND YOU CAN HEAR THEM ALL THE TIME IN WV. From Bloomberg by way of Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo, here are some bad arguments from the coal industry.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Just who's a bird brain?

Since I began spending time with birds here at Goat Rope Farm, I've been struck by how smart, emotional, and parental they can be. The more I see, the more the term bird brain doesn't seem to fit. However, recent research suggests that the label might well apply to all of us.

AFFORDABLE CARE FOR REAL. There's been quite a bit of noise on the right about how the Affordable Care Act will make health care unaffordable for many Americans. Not that reality matters much to that crowd, but it looks like individual health premiums in New York might fall by 50 percent next year as the reforms kick in.

CLIMATE CHANGE is expensive.

URGENT BIG-NOSE HORN-FACE DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Not a real blog post

I've been running around too much lately to put together a real blog post, but it did occur to me today, not for the first time, how easy it is for one person to ruin an otherwise productive meeting.

In case you were wondering, here's the most unhealthy fast food meal in the US.

Speaking of unhealthy, here's a story about nasty stuff in the air around horizontal gas wells.

Going from four to two. Here's how dinosaurs did it.

West Virginia wants a Future Fund

Interesting news from today's Charleston Gazette:

A substantial majority of West Virginians favor a proposal to increase taxes on coal operators to create a long-term fund to help diversify the state's economy, according to a new survey conducted for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

More than two-thirds of those surveyed by Lake Research Associates support the idea of using natural resources taxes for a "future fund," of the sort promoted by the West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy, a progressive think tank.

Read more here.

Wonky footnote: those of us who have been promoting the Future Fund think there are lots of ways of doing, some of which don't involve increasing taxes on coal or gas, although if we put more in, we'd obviously be able to get more out. One proposal would simply set aside a percentage of any increase in gas severance taxes above a given point.

Still, the numbers are exciting. I hope this gives the idea a boost.

LIKE DENYING CANCER. WV's ruling class loves to deny climate change because of money. This item suggests that may not be the best idea to ever roll down the pike.

INEQUALITY MATTERS. Here's a look at the whole one percent thing and an item on CEO pay.

A VIEW FROM UP NORTH. Here's a column by Gazette editor Dawn Miller about a public meeting in Wheeling of the WV Senate's Select Committee on Child Poverty.

URGENT BUMPY HEADED DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Small change

In lieu of a real blog post, here's...

...a look at great and not so great one liners;

...more on the whole bird/dinosaur thing, a topic I think about frequently when watching the turkeys and peacocks at Goat Rope Farm;

...some good coverage of the events celebrating the African American contribution to WV in the Charleston Daily Mail, including this editorial and this news story;

...and another whack at my perennial favorite target, Ayn Rand-ism.

Duly noted

Whilst driving to the glorious capitol city of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, I came upon a bumpersticker with a ribbon of indeterminate color and a picture of a set of brains. The caption read: "Support zombies."

FRIENDS OF WHOM? There is a good op-ed in today's Charleston Gazette by UMWA official and state Delegate Mike Caputo.  It asks a very basic question: where are the so-called Friends of Coal when it comes to supporting real coal miners who are at risk of losing promised benefits from Patriot Coal.

To state the extremely obvious, it's one thing to kiss up to coal companies and quite another to stand with coal miners and communities.

DEFICIT HYSTERIA gets whacked here.

URGENT FISH EATING FLYING DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Two for the road

It's been a long day but I'd like to share a couple of items.

The first tries to put to rest the overworked metaphor that links the federal budget to a household budget.

The second suggest ways to jump start the economy now.

Third one's a charm: in case you were Jonesing for an ancient icthyosaur update, click here.

Party on!

Fractopia

Remember these guys?

People have been talking about the Marcellus Shale natural gas boom for a few years in WV. So far, most of it has been taking place to the north of my  normal stomping grounds but I made a visit last week to see how it hit Wetzel County, which sits right at the base of WV's northern panhandle.

Aside from the Ohio River border, most of the county is pretty rural and was relatively bucolic, the operative word being was. Now the countryside has been torn up along with the highways as well pads, frack ponds, and pipelines go in all over the place.

Fracking or hydraulic fracturing is a term you hear a lot in conjunction with shale gas drilling. It refers to the practice of pumping water, sand and chemicals into horizontal wells thousands of feet underground. Actually, fracking is only one of several steps along the way.

As I understand it, the whole process consists of site preparation (they call them pads), which I've heard called "mini mountaintop removal sites." Basically it means clearing and leveling an area of several acres. Then comes the drilling, which goes down thousands of feet vertically and then moves horizontally across the layer of shale in which the gas is trapped. Then they "seal" the shaft by pumping concrete in to supposedly protect ground water and aquifers from contamination. We all know that concrete never cracks, right?

Once the well is dug, an explosive charge is detonated along the horizontal shaft to break up the shale. After that the fracking is done, in which several million gallons of water, sand and God knows what kind of toxic stuff is pumped in at high pressure to help release the gas. About half of the frack fluid stays in the ground; the rest has to find a home somewhere else.

Once stuff starts coming up the drill shaft, the next step is flaring to eliminate waste gas. Once the gas is good to go, it is pumped along pipelines with the help of natural gas  compressors. I'm sure I left out a few steps. All this involves thousands of tons of traffic on rural roads and lots of noise, besides concerns about air, water, solid waste and hazmat contamination. In a word, it's a mess. And, yes, lots of jobs are involved, but most of those go to out of state workers.

The WV legislature created some pretty good draft legislation, but it was "tweaked"--some would say gutted--by Gov. Tomblin. More regulation needs to happen if the political will can be generated. And we need to create a future fund from natural gas and other severance taxes to make sure WV gets a little something out of this mess.

PRIORITIES. Here's a good op-ed by a friend of mine which makes the connection between huge cuts in state corporate taxes and possible cuts in child care for low income working families. Unsportsmanlike conduct, I say.

HARD TIMES. Here's a sneak preview of Paul Krugman's latest book on the messed up economy.

FLEAS. Dinosaurs had em. Big ones.

SPEAKING OF GAS, the dinosaurs apparently had plenty of that too.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Coolest. Science. Story. Ever.

OK, nevermind what is going on in the world today. Check this out: some scientists believe that giant intelligent kraken-like octopi used to eat dinosaurs in prehistoric oceans and then deliberately arrange their bones.

Since nothing I could write or link could possibly be cooler than that, I'm going to stop right.

(Thanks, J.A.!)

Three for the road

It's starting to feel a bit like fall in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia, which means among other things that I need to get to work on that wood pile this weekend.

Meanwhile, a few items caught my eye today. First, here's Dean Baker and what to like and not like about Obama's jobs plan. Second, here's Paul Krugman on the GOP's "let em die" approach to health care. And finally, here's an urgent dinosaur feather update.

Cheers!

Since when was a marathon a sprint?

Even though the world is going to hell in a handbasket, I can't help but pause to note that Kenya's Geoffrey Mutai (birth certificate status unknown) ran the fastest marathon ever in Boston, with a time of 2 hours, two minutes and three seconds, almost a minute faster than the previous record.

It looks like it's only a matter of time before somebody breaks the two hour threshold.

I've done three marathons myself and usually it takes me about a week. Well, it seems like it anyway. I'm not sure I could go 26.2 that fast on a bicycle.

Maybe if it was all downhill...

THE FACTS ON TAXES can be found here.

DENY THIS. Here's something from the Washington Post on politically motivated climate change denial.

WHAT WE'RE MISSING OUT ON: a lot.

GOING FISHING, orangutan style. OK, so they use tools. But do they lie about the once that got away?

URGENT BUCKTOOTH DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Round and round

One economist I try to follow is Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. I've learned a lot from several of his works, including a study of how abundance of natural resources affects economic growth, and such books as The End of Poverty and Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. (I even used the latter as a textbook in a college class I taught.)

This piece by Sachs in the Huffington Post caught my eye. And this quote jumped off the page:

In the end, we have gotten from President Obama what we feared from Senator McCain: an expanded war in Afghanistan, an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, sharp cuts in spending for communities and programs for the poor, a continuation of Guantanamo and military tribunals, unchecked bankers' pay and bonuses, and enough loopholes to reduce corporate taxes to less than 2 percent of GDP this year, despite a boom in corporate profits.

Yippee! Not.

That's not the whole story. But, alas, it is part of it.

ALONG THOSE LINES, here's a political rant.

DEALING WITH BULLIES. Capitulation doesn't work too well.

RISKY BUSINESS. The House Republican plan to gut Medicare carries political risks.

URGENT DINOSAUR/SAUROPOD UPDATE here.

FRACK! Marcellus shale drilling methods might wind up polluting more than burning coal.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The tales that really mattered

I like to quote Vernon Johns, an African-American pastor who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement. His father told him, "If you see a good fight, get in it."

But it seems to me that the best or most righteous fights or struggles are not the ones that you go out looking for; rather, they are the ones that come to you.

In one of the more hopeless parts of The Lord of the Rings, the sturdy hobbit Sam Gamgee expressed a similar idea. Reflecting on the adventures related in old stories and songs, he said

I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually--their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on--and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it might call a good end...I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into?

That's a good question. I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into as well.

GREED IS IN, but that doesn't make it right.

JUST SAY NO. West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller came out swinging against Republican proposals to kill Medicaid and Medicare. To their credit, acting governor Earl Ray Tomblin and WV's newest senator Joe Manchin also oppose the plan. (Note: to get to the story scroll down after clicking on the link.)

TWO MINUTE WARNING. The clock is running out on a chance to modernize WV's unemployment system.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, dinosaurs probably had lice.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Next stop...Ohio?

Yesterday, close to 100 people jammed into a legislative committee room in Charleston WV to make a statement in support of workers in Wisconsin protesting against a union busting effort led by governor Scott Walker. Quite a few legislators attended, in addition to several dozen union supporters.

(By the way, you can follow a good chunk of the money behind the right wing jihad in Wisconsin and elsewhere to the Koch brothers.)

Now, it looks like another protest is building in Ohio, where a similar measure is being considered, and in Indiana, where "right to work (for less)" legislation is getting some play.

Clearly, the billionaire funded right wants to kill the labor movement, but union members don't seem to be going gently into that good night. I hope instead of an easy victory the enemies of labor stir up a hornet's nest.

A SUGGESTION FOR WORKING PEOPLE: just say no.

WONDER WHY? There are more hate groups in the US than ever before, according to a new study.

URGENT DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Wrecker of mead-benches

El Cabrero is having fun here with Beowulf lately, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, check earlier posts.

If one were to make a list of the qualities of a good political leader these days, the ability to wreck the drinking halls of his foes might not make it to the top of the list, but it sure did in the opening lines of Beowulf. That was one of several attributed to an early king of the Spear-Danes.

Just for fun, here are the opening lines in the original Anglo-Saxon:

HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!
oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas, syððanærest wearð
feasceaft funden; he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum weorðmyndum þah,
oð þæt him æghwylc ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan; þæt wæs god cyning!

Did everybody get that?

Seriously, though, it's hard to recognize that as English apart from a few words, although it was just that in second half of the first millennium AD. It still might have been if a certain Norman called William the Bastard didn't become William the Conqueror. The alphabet was a bit different, as you can tell. For example the thing that looks like a weird letter p had a th sound. I haven't got around to figuring out the other ones yet.

Here's Seamus Heaney's version of the same passage:

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.

There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes,
a wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among foes.
This terror of the hall-troops had come far.
A foundling to start with, he would flourish later on
as his powers waxed and his worth was proved.
In the end each clan on the outlying coasts
beyond the whale-road had to yield to him
and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.

Scourging, wrecking, rampaging, collecting tribute. A "god cyning" (good king) indeed.

(My favorite phrase from the original is "hronrade," which means "whale road," i.e. the sea. I'm thinking about referring henceforth to the muddy river I grew up around as "the carp road.")

SAD BUT PREDICTABLE. Some conservatives are re-writing the narrative of the Great Recession by--you guessed it--blaming the poor.

POST-MASSEY. Will Alpha be any better? Here's Ken Ward's take on it. My guess: it would be hard to be worse.

DOING MORE FOR THE WORKING POOR. Here's a call for a state earned income tax credit.

UNCERTAINTY about Republican efforts to repeal health care reform has left many Americans in a tough spot.

GETTING REAL. Still, West Virginia is getting ready to implement reform (probably). The state insurance commission is proposing creating a state insurance exchange. Meanwhile a major expansion of Medicaid is on the horizon.

FILLING IN THE TRICERATOPS FAMILY TREE. A newly discovered ancestor of the three horned dinosaur weighed in at around 15,000 pounds and had a skull eight feet long.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A demon-haunted world

Back in the 1990s, Carl Sagan wrote a book titled The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. The theme here lately is Beowulf and Sagan's title--minus the science--is a pretty good description of the world of the poem.

The seas literally teem with monsters, as is related in the story of a swimming match between Beowulf and his friend Brecca where the former, swimming for days with sword and armor, has to overcome nine sea beasts.

The land isn't much better. All kinds of nasty creatures, such as Grendel and his mother, prowl the lonely areas and attack humans and animals at will. Such monsters, which are said to be the offspring of the children of Cain, the primal murderer. Grendel, the poet says, he

haunted the moors, the wild Marshes, and made his home in a hell.
Not hell but hell on earth. He was spawned in that slime
Of Cain, murderous creatures banished
By God, punished forever for the crime of Abel's death.

The haunted mere or swamp (lake?) where Grendel and his mother live is likewise full of monsters and nasty giant water snakes.

Then there are dragons, irritable fire-breathing monsters with venomous bites who dwell on hoarded gold and don't take kindly to being disturbed.

As noted in yesterday's post, the human world wasn't a whole lot nicer. All of which makes for a pretty good story, if not a very nice place to live.

STATE OF THE UNION. It would probably be trite beyond words to say that the state of the union address seemed political to me but there you have it. There were things to like and not to like. I am concerned that the proposed freeze in federal spending could have a recessionary effect. More on that to come.

WHAT HE SAID. Here's NY Times columnist Bob Herbert talking sense on Social Security and the real cause of budget deficits.

HEALTH CARE REFORM seems to be moving ahead in West Virginia.

GENGHIS KHAN left a greener world behind him. His methods, however, are not recommended for emulation.

TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE to remember.

URGENT DINOSAUR UPDATE here. This newly discovered one had just one finger. I could think of things to say but will spare the reader.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

This could happen to anybody

Goats could drive anybody to drink.

Okay. Every so often a news story will catch the eye. This week I ran across one from Poland about a farmer who was arrested for drunk driving while taking his lonely goat out on a date.

Lest there be any confusion, he was not dating the goat himself, but rather escorting it on a visit to a female companion. Apparently the goat was riding in the back seat. It is a truth universally acknowledged that goats dislike riding shotgun.

Apparently, when he got to the farm of his friend, whereat the female goat resided, the humans pounded back some vodka while the goats engaged in that delicate form of courtship for which they are so famed.

Actually, I've been in similar situations, minus the vodka. We don't have a buck (an un-neutered male for you goat civilians) so whenever our lady goats are in the mood to enjoy the converse of a caprine gentleman we put them in the back of the Spousal Unit's Matrix and haul them off.

Perhaps one reason we haven't indulged in vodka on these quadrupedal booty calls is because they don't take that long...

(For some reason, our lady goats tend to crave male companionship at awkward times and are often particularly demanding about such visits on or about Christmas Day, which kind of puts a damper on the whole manger story for me.)
While El Cabrero is officially opposed to drunk driving, the thing that really stuck in my mind is the idea of putting a randy male goat in one's car. They are odoriferous beasts and the odor clings to anything they come into contact with for a long time to come. Whatever happens to the driver, I hope there's a good stockpile of car air fresheners in the European Union. And, it goes without saying, I hope that the date was a felicitous one.

THE GREAT DIVIDE. Here's another call for debate without destruction.

THE LEGACY OF NONVIOLENCE. From the WV News Service, here's a story featuring a friend of mine and an associate of the Revs. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sr. on violent and nonviolent communication.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS. Conservative activist Grover Norquist wants public debate on the costs of the war in Afghanistan.

DENIED. In a move sure to generate coalfield controversy, the EPA vetoed Arch Coal's Spruce Mine permit, which would have been the largest mountaintop removal mine in WV history.

CUTE LITTLE DINOSAUR UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED