Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader goes away for a few days, and then Saddam Hussein is captured. Coincidence? We think not…

Lots of stuff to think over before doing a serious post. Thanks to my loyal ministers for blogging in my absence.

Carry on.

Go to any news url, cnn, usatoday, washingtonpost etc, and the lead story will be about the capture of Saddam Hussen. Wonderful news all around.

That is, unless you are a Democrat. I wonder if Dean, Gephart et al. are sitting at home banging their heads against a wall. Given the state of disorder in the Democratic party, and the absolute lack of any sort of vision displayed by the Left right now, this has to put a damper on their chances in 2004.

Still, it’s a joyous day for any who love Freedom, and Liberty Great news all around.

Actually, it’s a crappy day for me. I have to fly to Seattle today in this nasty weather. For someone who dislikes air travel already, yuck.

PLUS, I have to miss the Skins-Cowboys game.

Back from Africa– again– Tacitus offers up a meditation on shifting political perceptions and realities. Selected chunks of dairy cow:

I have in recent weeks started to question just what the American left thinks American conservatism is. I go through Jesse Taylor’s ‘03 Most Annoying Conservatives list to find not a single individual whom I read or pay attention to; Tim Dunlop tells me that I’m in a minority if I don’t listen to Limbaugh or Hannity; and Dave Neiwert spends a great deal of time and energy countering the eliminationist threat from the marginal idiot Misha. And now Meteor Blades is telling me that the American right is about to achieve its greatest dream. Well, no.

Or maybe, just as the right could barely bear to acknowledge Clinton’s conservative achievements — balanced budgets, welfare reform — so the left can now hardly admit the liberalism of George W. Bush and the modern “conservative” movement. I could be wrong — it’s just a thought.

This isn’t exactly a new topic, but it’s an important one. I’ve found it supremely ironic that the rubric “small-government” can’t be applied to Republicans, to the extent they feel it necessary to legislate morality and private conduct at the national level. I find it ironic that Dean appears to be the fiscal conservative while Bush appears– no, IS– profligate. It’s ironic that many liberals seem to have, through a perhaps too-thorough immersion in the postmodernist version of pluralism, painted themselves into a weird little corner in which “respect all cultures– do not judge!” becomes an ethic that protects those cultural forms that, by all rights, deserve to disappear.

We’re in an amazing period of ideological flux right now. People’s perceptions and interpretations of the same event are wildly different: the world isn’t just spinning; it’s spin.

Great time to be alive and aware.

_

For the Foreign Minister:

http://www.albc-usa.org/

Bonnie is on the “watch list,” but Ayrshires are certainly representative of a wider gene pool than Holsteins. Holsteins now make up over 95% of dairy cattle today, so I guess the rest of the dairy breeds (except maybe the Jersey) are becoming rare.

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/cattle/ayrshire/

When I add sheep to the operation it will be Tunis sheep. A cool rare breed with a cool history.

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep/tunis/index.htm

All three of our chicken breeds are on the albc list, though Orpingtons are recovering.

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/poultry/chickens/araucana/index.htm

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/poultry/chickens/hamburg/silverspangled.htm

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/poultry/chickens/orpington/buff.htm

I would love a guest blog on bovine immunology from Mrs. Air Marshall!

I like Rare Breed too. Best bourbon around. For the FM’s benefit, I checked, and Rare Breed IS available in Germany.

Thanks for the epistle on bovine longevity. Its intriguing to me. I guess, in a way, I am living part of my life vicariously through the MA.

When is the MA going to put up a website so we can “virtualy” check in on the farm?

Have the steers gone to the big house?

Personally, I like the rare breeds myself. For no other reason than it is something that you don‚ÄövÑv¥t see every day and you are keeping alive breeds that are not marketable but are possibly still very good beef or dairy cattle.

Is there anything in the US like The Rare Breeds Survival Trust?
Is there any niche market for steaks or milk from something other than over geneticized cattle?

It reminds me of produce. It seems like all the really good fruit and vegetable varieties (that taste good) have been replaced with varieties that produce well (and maybe look better on the shelf).

Back to the Trenches

My God, the minister of Agriculture is long winded….

My wife got her MS working on a degree dealing with Bovine Immunology. If you want, I can have her guest blog on that, for your benefit. She’s been working on Biophysics related to EM fields since about 97, but I’m sure she’d willingly take a walk through the cowpatties of her past.

For those who don’t know any of us… in one of those bizzare coincidences, I went to Elementary School with the Minister of Agriculture, I went to High School with Max Leader, and Minister of Agriculture went to College with Max Leader.

Not that any of that matters to the unwashed masses.

The Maximum Leader‚ÄövÑv¥s vacation has left a heavy burden on his loyal lieutenants. Since there is nothing in the news that is particularly electrifying, I will blog on the contentious, much-debated issue of bovine longevity. For those of you who care not one whit about cattle, skip this blog. If you are interested in random farming thoughts, read on.

Last weekend a professional photographer came to Sweet Seasons Farm. He is a stock photographer who sells family-type pictures to magazines like ‚ÄövÑv Parenting Today.‚ÄövÑvp In return for allowing him to sell any marketable pics, we will be getting as many professional-quality prints of my daughter as we wish. Cool deal, huh?

We set up one shooting location next the barn my Dad and I have been building. I pushed a few hay bales together in the location chosen by the photographer to maximize light, propped my beautiful daughter atop the hay bale with a Buff Orpington hen, and sat down to pose with the family.

My bovine who thinks she is a canine decided that she needed attention and that the family picture would be incomplete without her presence and joined us. The photographer ended up taking a bunch of shots of just the heifer (What! Are you saying the cow is better looking than my daughter!?).

(In case you were wondering, in the light of the fact that our family portrait includes a chicken and a cow, my ‚ÄövÑv farm dog‚ÄövÑvp Kermit is not in the picture. He has decided that it was too cold for his runty little butt and returned to the warmth of the indoors. The declension model is so, so, true.)

<<>>

The photographer was quite taken by Bonnie‚ÄövÑv¥s cheerful friendliness. We went through an entire conversation about having a family cow. At one point, he asked about how long a cow lived. I had to pause and collect my thoughts before I answered.

Bovine longevity is a tricky issue.

Very few cows actually live long enough to succumb to old age. Male cattle have an even shorter life expectancy.

Veal calves (usually bull calves of the dairy breeds) have the least amount of time on this globe. They are generally slaughtered at one to three months of age. Of course, considering the conditions that veal calves suffer, the short lifespan may be a blessing.

Baby beef steers are generally walk the last mile at between 8 and 12 months of age.

Most beef steers (or beeves) are sent to slaughter at 14 to 16 months of age after several months of intense grain feeding.

Bulls in beef herds may last to 4 or 5 years ‚ÄövÑv¨ if kept any longer, they will end up breeding their own daughters that have been kept as replacements. Sometimes farmers might trade bulls and that would give the traded bulls a two year extension, but usually bulls are just sent to the slaughterhouse when the threat of inbreeding arises.

Dairy bulls kept for semen ‚ÄövÑv¨ and these represent a tiny, tiny percentage of bulls, may live a couple years longer since inbreeding is not a factor. The limit here is imposed by the constant increase in the genetic merit of each Holstein generation ‚ÄövÑv¨ A bull whose semen carries a premium one year is obsolete two years later. Even a freakishly awesome bull may not live long ‚ÄövÑv¨ his semen can be harvested and shipped for years after he has met the butcher.

Most dairy cows will live for around 5 years ‚ÄövÑv¨ three lactations is the average. With few exceptions, they simply wear out fast. Since Holsteins have now been so genetically modified, their huge udders do not last for years; instead of producing one or two gallons of milk a day, there are now some top-of-the line Holsteins that produce 12-15 gallons of milk a day. Imagine your wife or girlfriend (or yourself) and then increase breast size by a factor of 8. That is where our Holsteins are now. Eventually the udder attachment will start to give out and the cow will lose its ability to produce milk. Genetic advancement lays a role too. If a dairy farmer is following sound genetic practices when purchasing semen, the new heifers will ALWAYS be better than their dams. An older cow producing 24,000 lbs of milk a year will be sent to the butcher to make way for her daughter who produces 24,500. The genetic improvement has come at a price; modern Holsteins have a remarkably small gene pool ‚ÄövÑv¨ good bulls who throw milk production might father tens of thousands of calves. While this has led to unbelievable increases in productivity, it has come at the cost of lower fertility ‚ÄövÑv¨ many cows have difficulty becoming pregnant so they are culled too. Additionally, the conditions in which dairy cows are raised also limits their lifespan. In many operations, the cows never leave their barns and are on hard concrete their entire lives. By the time they reach four or five years of age their knees are so afflicted with arthritis that they have to be culled. Constant exposure to built up manure allows disease to spread. One particularly nasty manure-borne disease is Johnes disease. I visited a 1400 cow dairy two years ago in which the disease was endemic. Johnes disease is the bovine equivalent of Krohn‚ÄövÑv¥s disease in humans ‚ÄövÑv¨ the intestinal lining of the stomach is gradually eaten away, causing great pain, and eventually death. The dairy did not even attempt to keep new heifers from catching the disease. Since the progress of the disease is as slow as it is painful, it does not cause a real drop in production until the cow is four or five years old ‚ÄövÑv¨ at which point most cows are going to be culled anyway. A few strong cows that have good udder attachment and are good milk producers might warrant a few more lactations ‚ÄövÑv¨ those cows might be lost to Johnes but the percentage is so small that it isn‚ÄövÑv¥t economical to try to isolate them from the pathogen.

Beef cows last much longer. Since the pressure for genetic improvement is much lower, there is not the same incentive to switch out cows for newer models. They also tend to live their lives on sod, which preserves their legs. Most will survive until age takes a toll on their ability to calve or breed back. A tremendously efficient beef producer might replace his cows every seven or eight years ‚ÄövÑv¨ the point at which the pregnancy cycle starts to stretch from twelve to fifteen months. More relaxed cow-calf operations might hold onto a cow to ten or twelve years.

Which brings us to Bonnie. She is an Ayrshire and one of the reasons I chose that breed is because they have not been genetically suped-up to the same extent as the black and whites. A high level of milk production isn‚ÄövÑv¥t that important ‚ÄövÑv¨ four gallons a day will raise four calves (and four more after those are weaned). I expect that she will be able to calve and milk for me for twelve years or so. While it doesn‚ÄövÑv¥t make much economic sense, at that point I‚ÄövÑv¥ll keep one of her daughters and let her retire. She is already a pet ‚ÄövÑv¨ she won‚ÄövÑv¥t end her days as hamburger. With grass to eat, a barn to shelter her old bones in the winter and room to roam the other three seasons, she will probably live to twenty or twenty-five, a loyal old 1100 pound pet.

Ohwhere oh where is the ML going?

Is he going to the hospital to have that big growth on his left butt cheek removed?

Is he going to camp out for disney on ice tickets for the Villainettes?

Or is he just at home spending several days gaming on his new supercomputer, not showering, existing only on a diet of diet soda, cheap beer and cheeze doodles, until his back room office smells as nasty as a Frenchman’s left shoe.

The world may never know.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader must leave the dark imposing towers of the Villainschloss and do a little travel. Is he going to confer with the Pope? Give the latest set of marching orders to Dick Cheney? Is he going to the Trilateral Commission meeting? Is he going to Belgium to see how his plans for dominating Europe through the auspices of the EU are going?

That is the question…. One that will be more shrouded in secrecy than G.W. Bush’s Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad…

So while your Maximum Leader is away, he will leave this space in the trusteeship of his various Ministers. May all of you blog well in my temporary absence. Your Maximum Leader hopes to be blogging again on Sunday.

Carry on.

Now the real reason the French/Germans/Russians opposed the war becomes apparent once again. We snuffed out one of their best customers. Shouldn’t have been selling military related equipment to a nation under a UN embargo, anyway, but I guess that’s irrelevant. Europeans are free to ignore the UN when convenient.

UN control of the Internet? I can see the rules now. Every 5th e-mail sent MUST denounce Israel. Well, since Al Gore invented it, who better then Kofi Annan (sp?) to administer it.

The UN is great. Saudi Arabia lets a school full of little girls burn to the ground, killing all involved, because their fire fighters aren’t allowed to mingle with “single women” due to Morality issues… and the UN is silent. But every time an American Soldier flicks a booger on the ground, the UN calls for an investigation. The UN has become an “I hate America/Israel” forum. I used to think that at the very least, it was good to have representatives of all these nations in the same room talking. Now I’m not sure it’s even worth that.

And with regard to the UN and the EU, where do their legitimacy come from? I’m a big believer that legitimacy of governments flows from the people on up. Legitimate elections are the implementation of the voice of the citizens. So how is the UN a legitimate voice for anything, unless it’s power flows, through governments, from the people? And where to the fat, chocolate munching Belgian bureaucrats get off thinking they can rule the world by decree from Brussels? I don’t think we should acknowledge the EU in any way, until it’s run by elected officials.

Note to ML… Become a Belgian bureaucrat. That’s your path to eventual power. There’s no accountability for the EU, so all you need to do is rise to power there, declare yourself leader of Europe. Chose whatever title you want, let’s say Chancellor for arguments sake. Don’t renounce your American citizenship. Once you’re ML of Europe, then use your financial assets to win the Republican nomination for president. Let’s be real, enough money will by you anything in the GOP. And you can raid your European coffers. Once you are both ML of Europe and President of the US, you can throw off your Chancellors robes and declare your self Darth Maximus, Dark Lord of the Sith, Imperious Leader, or whatever you want.

What did they expect? Here again, they are so confident in their winning the steel tariff issue that they want to take this to the WTO.

And to hear Russia complain that they are owed 9 Billion! That is what they get for selling Saddam crappy soviet military equipment, outdated oil drilling equipment, and GPS jammers. This Iraq business is going to cost the US way over 80 Billion and I don‚ÄövÑv¥t want a penny of it to go into the hands of the EU vultures REGARDLESS of whether or not it was a ‚ÄövÑv just‚ÄövÑvp war.

And, now the UN is meeting in Geneva to discuss Internet access for everyone (read poor countries that cannot afford the infrastructure). That is fine and dandy, but I am sure that they want the US to help foot the bill. I have also heard that on the agenda is moving the control of the internet out of the hands of the United States and under UN control.

Yeah, that is exactly what we need. Maybe Robert Mugabe will be the UN minister responsible for this equal access project.

Back to the Trenches

FM

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been quick preoccupied today and unable to blog much. He did, however, happen to take a break to catch up on the news and various blogs. He wanted to write something concerning the US decision to only allow contractors from countries allied to the US in Iraq to bid on Iraqi reconstruction contracts. He read some other bloggers and decided to direct his minions to Gregg Easterbrook. Choice line: Are France and Germany so pathetic now that their contractors must receive handouts from American taxpayers?

Carry on.

Greetings loyal minons. Your Maximum Leader enjoyed watching the Sci Fi channels “Battlestar Galactica” mini-series on Monday and Tuesday night. He shall now share some thoughts on it with you…

I really liked how it became a human drama and not just a space adventure shoot ‘em up. The human stories were the prime movers of the story. They did a great job of developing characters that were full. Full in the sense of being real and accessible to the viewer. The special effects were good. CGI gets better and better. I liked the way the show looked. The sets were good, there was enough of the old series in it to satisfy my nostalgic impulses, but it was new enough for me to recognize the art direction involved was good.

I enjoyed the the way the Cylon concept had been modified from the series. They were created by humans to make life easier and then decided to rise up against their creators. This storyline taps into some interesting archetypal stories. But one interesting subtext to the new human-esque Cylons is their capacity to feel emotion and to grow and learn intellectually. In some respect the primary Cylon character in the story (the hot blonde one) seems to have feelings for Baltar and is giving him help (if she is in fact more than a figment of his imagination - another great possible storyline). In what way could they be like Replicants from Blade Runner…. Humm….

On a lighter note:

But Boomer is a Cylon!!!!! ACK! Yes, she is a Cylon. Hummm… Like the Replicant (Rachel) in Blade Runner, she doesn’t know. She may even think she is a human. Is Apollo going to have to invite her back to his place, get her drunk, sleep with her, and then start describing her memories for her to make her realize she is a Cylon?

Also, So let me get this straight. There are 12 models of Cylons. And as best we can tell there are four models that look and act like humans. And of those four models, there are two male models; and two female models. The male models are generally unattractive and even sorta geeky. But the female models are a scortching hot blonde and an equally hot asian. As as best we can tell, both female models are quite hormonally active. Hummmm… What was the downside to a Cylon takeover for Baltar? (Assuming they would let him live…)

And finally… Where did all The Brothers go? Col. Tigh used to be a Brother; now he is an old bald boozing white guy. Boomer used to be a Brother; now he is a hot asian chick (Cylon). The only Brother I saw was the one guy panicing on the Transport ship with the Education Minister/President of the Colonies. Okay, what’s her name, that used to be the Blonde communications girl; she is now a Sister. But really… What happened? The “Lords of Cobol” (sounds like a bad heavy metal band made up of middle aged computer programmers) sent almost all the Brothers to Earth? Where’s the love in that?

That is all for now.

Carry on.

Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, for many many years, has had harboured a real dislike of Maryland. It must be said that some of your Maximum Leader’s best friends and most loyal minions live (or have lived) in Maryland. But it still pains him to travel to/in that state. Now, it gives him great pleasure to say that Virginia has bitch-slapped Maryland in the US Supreme Court.

Carry on.